European integration

Progress of European integration

The European Union (EU) that we know today started out in 1952 as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The founding members were Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The idea was to withdraw those resources that had been vital for the world wars - coal and steel - from national sovereignty in order to preserve lasting peace.

Encouraged by their success, the same six countries soon decided to integrate other sectors of their economies, such as agriculture, with the aim of removing trade barriers and of forming a common market. In 1958, these six countries established the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). In 1967 the institutions of these three Communities were merged. In the course of time, other European countries joined the then European Communities (EC) - or, since the Maastricht Treaty (1992), the European Union - in several rounds of accession.

The Treaty of Lisbon, which is an amending rather than a constitutional treaty, entered into force on 1 December 2009. It amends the Treaty on the European Union (Maastricht) and the Treaty Establishing the European Community (Rome). It lays down a new institutional framework aimed at making today’s European Union of 27 Member States more democratic, more transparent and more efficient. It also seeks to enhance the coherence and visibility of the EU's action on the world stage.

Integration means in this context that the countries take joint decisions on many matters - approving "policies" - in a very vast field, ranging from agriculture to culture, from consumer affairs to competition and from the environment and energy to transport and trade.

The Single Market was to be formally completed at the end of 1992, but there is still work to be done in some areas - for example, creating a genuinely single market in financial services.

Source: www.europa.eu

For more information on the Treaty of Lisbon, see http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty