The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a European organization created after World War II to integrate Europe's coal and steel industries into a single common market based on the principle of supranationalism. It was formally established in 1951 by the Treaty of Paris, signed by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The organization's subsequent enlargement of both members and duties ultimately led to the creation of the European Union.
The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957, aiming to foster economic integration among its member states. It was subsequently renamed the European Community (EC) upon becoming integrated into the first pillar of the newly formed European Union in 1993. In the popular language, however, the singular European Community was sometimes inaccurately used in the wider sense of the plural European Communities, in spite of the latter designation covering all the three constituent entities of the first pillar.
The Treaty of Rome, or EEC Treaty, brought about the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), the best known of the European Communities (EC). The treaty was signed on 25 March 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany, and it came into force on 1 January 1958. Originally the "Treaty establishing the European Economic Community", and now continuing under the name "Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union", it remains one of the two most important treaties in what is now the European Union (EU).
The European Atomic Energy Community is an international organisation established by the Euratom Treaty on 25 March 1957 with the original purpose of creating a specialist market for nuclear power in Europe, by developing nuclear energy and distributing it to its member states while selling the surplus to non-member states. However, over the years its scope has been considerably increased to cover a large variety of areas associated with nuclear power and ionising radiation as diverse as safeguarding of nuclear materials, radiation protection and construction of the International Fusion Reactor ITER.
The European Communities (EC) were three international organizations that were governed by the same set of institutions. These were the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Community, and the European Economic Community (EEC); the last of which was renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union. The European Union was established at that time more as a concept rather than an entity, while the Communities remained the actual subjects of international law impersonating the rather abstract Union, becoming at the same time its first pillar. In the popular language, however, the singular European Community was sometimes inaccurately used interchangeably with the plural phrase, in the sense of referring to all three entities. The European Coal and Steel Community ceased to exist in 2002 when its founding treaty expired. The European Community was merged with the second and third EU pillars by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, finally allowing the European Union to move beyond being only a concept and to assume the shape of a legally incorporated international organization with juridical personality, designated as the legal successor to the Community. However, the reformed EU has not become entirely unified, because Euratom, though governed with the EU by the common set of institutions, has been retained as an entity distinct from the EU, along with a number of other international entities, such as the European Investment Bank, the European University Institute, the European Stability Mechanism, and the Unified Patent Court.
Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are considered the second largest democratic elections in the world after India's.
The Merger Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Brussels, was a European treaty which unified the executive institutions of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the European Economic Community (EEC). The treaty was signed in Brussels on 8 April 1965 and came into force on 1 July 1967. It set out that the Commission of the European Communities should replace the High Authority of the ECSC, the Commission of the EEC and the Commission of Euratom, and that the Council of the European Communities should replace the Special Council of Ministers of the ECSC, the Council of the EEC and the Council of Euratom. Although each Community remained legally independent, they shared common institutions and were together known as the European Communities. This treaty is regarded by some as the real beginning of the modern European Union.
Between 1993 and 2009, the European Union (EU) legally comprised three pillars. This structure was introduced with the Treaty of Maastricht on 1 November 1993, and was eventually abandoned on 1 December 2009 upon the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, when the EU obtained a consolidated legal personality.
- The European Communities pillar handled economic, social and environmental policies. It comprised the European Community (EC), the European Coal and Steel Community, and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM).
- The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) pillar took care of foreign policy and military matters.
- Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters (PJCCM) brought together co-operation in the fight against crime. This pillar was originally named Justice and Home Affairs (JHA)
The Euratom Treaty, officially the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community, established the European Atomic Energy Community. It was signed on 25 March 1957 at the same time as the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community.
The European Institute (EI) is an international institution of graduate studies and research, based in Nice, France. It is a department of the Centre international de formation européenne (CIFE).
The European Audiovisual Observatory is a public service organisation, part of the Council of Europe set up in 1992.
The seven institutions of the European Union (EU) are seated in four different cities, which are Brussels (Belgium), Frankfurt am Main (Germany), Luxembourg (Luxembourg) and Strasbourg (France), rather than being concentrated in a single capital city. All four were chosen, among various reasons, for their location halfway between France and Germany, the countries whose rivalry led to two World Wars and whose reconciliation paved the way for European integration. The EU agencies and other bodies are located all across the union, but usually not fixed in the treaties. The Hague is the only exception, as the fixed seat of the Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol). Over the years, Brussels has become the EU's political hub, with the College of the Commissioners – the European Commission's politically accountable executive – and the European Council both meeting at their Brussels-based headquarters, and the European Parliament and Council of the EU holding the majority of their meetings annually within the city. This has led to some referring to it as "the capital of the EU". However, Luxembourg City is the EU capital that can lay claim to having the most of the seven EU institutions based wholly or partly upon its territory, with only the European Council and European Central Bank not having a presence in the city.
The Archive of European Integration (AEI) is an electronic repository and archive for research materials on the topic of European integration and unification. The AEI contains two types of documents:
This is a timeline of European Union history and its previous development.
The Messina Conference of 1955 was a meeting of the six member states of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The conference assessed the progress of the ECSC and, deciding that it was working well, proposed further European integration. This initiative led to the creation in 1957 of the European Economic Community and Euratom.
The High Authority was the executive branch of the former European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). It was created in 1951 and disbanded in 1967 when it was merged into the European Commission.
Christian Lequesne is a French academic. He is professor of European politics at Sciences Po and director of the Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI), and professor at the College of Europe. Additionally, he currently serves as a visiting professor at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. He was the first LSE-Sciences Po Alliance Professor at the London School of Economics (2006-2008), a chair funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was the Theseus Visiting Professor at the University of Cologne 2009-2010. He is on the editorial boards or scientific councils of Critique internationale, Politique européenne, and the Journal of European Integration. Christian Lequesne is a member of the advisory board of the Prague European Summit.
Jérémy Decerle is a Charolais breeder, French politician and former trade unionist. He was president of the "Young Farmers" union from 2016 to 2019, before being elected Member of the European Parliament in 2019, on the list supported by Emmanuel Macron.
The European Schools is an intergovernmental organisation, which has established, finances, and administers a small group of multilingual international schools, bearing the title "European School", which exist primarily to offer an education to the children of European Union (EU) staff; offers accreditation to other schools, bearing the title "Accredited European School", under national jurisdiction within EU member states to provide its curriculum; and oversees the provision of the secondary school leaving diploma, the European Baccalaureate.
The Action Committee for the United States of Europe, colloquially referred to as the Monnet Committee, was a collective initiative spearheaded by Jean Monnet from 1955 to 1975 that aimed at accelerating European integration through informal dialogue among key political and trade unions leaders. It was a civil society endeavor that lied outside of any formal policymaking process, but involved the direct participation of organizations that collectively wielded overwhelming decision-making power within its geographical scope, namely the participating countries of the European Coal and Steel Community and from 1958 of the European Communities.
