The euro is the official currency of 20 of the 27 member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the euro area or, more commonly, the eurozone. The euro is divided into 100 euro cents.
The "Celtic Tiger" is a term referring to the economy of Ireland from the mid-1990s to the late 2000s, a period of rapid real economic growth fuelled by foreign direct investment. The boom was dampened by a subsequent property bubble which resulted in a severe economic downturn.
The euro area, commonly called the eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 20 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro (€) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU policies.
European integration is the process of industrial, economic, political, legal, social, and cultural integration of states wholly or partially in Europe, or nearby. European integration has primarily but not exclusively come about through the European Union and its policies.
Eamon Gilmore is a European Union diplomat, and an Irish former Labour Party politician. He serves as European Union Special Representative for Human Rights since February 2019. He is also the European Union Special Envoy for the Colombian Peace Process since 2015. He was Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade from 2011 to 2014, Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2014, Chair of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe from 2012 to 2013, Minister of State at the Department of the Marine from 1994 to 1997. He was a Teachta Dála for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 1989 to 2016.
Simon Coveney is an Irish Fine Gael politician who served as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment from 2022 to 2024. He served as deputy leader of Fine Gael from 2017 to 2024. He has been in the cabinet since 2011, holding a range of ministerial portfolios, including as Tánaiste from 2017 to 2020.
The economy of the European Union is the joint economy of the member states of the European Union (EU). It is the second largest economy in the world in nominal terms, after the United States, and the third largest at purchasing power parity (PPP), after China and the US. The European Union's GDP is estimated to be $19.35 trillion (nominal) in 2024 or $26.64 trillion (PPP), representing around one-sixth of the global economy. Germany has the biggest national GDP of all EU countries, followed by France and Italy. In 2022, the social welfare expenditure of the European Union (EU) as a whole was 19.5% of its GDP.
Frances Fitzgerald is an Irish politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland for the Dublin constituency from July 2019 to July 2024. She is a member of Fine Gael, part of the European People's Party. She previously served as Tánaiste from 2016 to 2017, Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation from June 2017 to November 2017, Minister for Justice and Equality from 2014 to 2016, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs from 2011 to 2014 and Leader of Fine Gael in the Seanad from 2007 to 2011. She served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1992 to 2002 and 2011 to 2019. She was also a Senator for the Labour Panel from 2007 to 2011.
The European Union Customs Union (EUCU), formally known as the Community Customs Union, is a customs union which consists of all the member states of the European Union (EU), Monaco, and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. Some detached territories of EU states do not participate in the customs union, usually as a result of their geographic separation. In addition to the EUCU, the EU is in customs unions with Andorra, San Marino and Turkey, through separate bilateral agreements.
The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is an intergovernmental organization located in Luxembourg City, which operates under public international law for all eurozone member states having ratified a special ESM intergovernmental treaty. It was established on 27 September 2012 as a permanent firewall for the eurozone, to safeguard and provide instant access to financial assistance programmes for member states of the eurozone in financial difficulty, with a maximum lending capacity of €500 billion. It has replaced two earlier temporary EU funding programmes: the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM).
The Thirtieth Amendment of the Constitution Act 2012 amended the Constitution of Ireland to permit Ireland to ratify the 2012 European Fiscal Compact and to preclude measures taken under the Compact from being held to be inconsistent with the Irish constitution. It was approved by referendum on 31 May 2012, by 60.3% to 39.7%, on a turnout of 50% and was signed into law by President Michael D. Higgins on 27 June 2012.
Brexit was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). Following a referendum held on 23 June 2016, Brexit officially took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020. The UK is the only sovereign country to have withdrawn from the EU. The UK had been a member state of the EU or its predecessor, the European Communities (EC), since 1 January 1973. Following Brexit, EU law and the Court of Justice of the European Union no longer have primacy over British laws. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 retains relevant EU law as domestic law, which the UK can amend or repeal.
The Craiova Group (Quadrilateral), Craiova Four, or C4 is a cooperation project of four European states – Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia – for the purposes of furthering their European integration as well as economic, transport and energy cooperation with one another. The Group originated in a summit meeting of the heads of governments of Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, held on 24 April 2015 in the Romanian city of Craiova. At the group's inaugural meeting, Romania's then-Prime Minister Victor Ponta indicated that he was inspired by the Visegrád Group. Romania and Bulgaria both joined the European Union on 1 January 2007, while Serbia has been in accession negotiations since January 2014. Since October 2017 at the meeting in Varna, Bulgaria, with the inclusion of Greece, meetings have been quadrilateral.
Between 2017 and 2019, representatives of the United Kingdom and the European Union negotiated the terms of Brexit. The UK's planned its withdrawal from membership of the EU. These negotiations arose following the decision of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, following the UK's EU membership referendum on 23 June 2016.
Wopke Bastiaan Hoekstra is a Dutch politician. He served as second Deputy Prime Minister of the Netherlands and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the fourth Rutte cabinet between 10 January 2022 and 1 September 2023. Hoekstra previously served as Minister of Finance in the third Rutte cabinet from 2017 to 2022 and Leader of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) from 2020 to 2023. In 2023, he was nominated to take on the role of Frans Timmermans as EU Commissioner, being responsible for climate action; a petition was started against Hoekstra's nomination due to his past work for Shell and his decisions that backed oil explorations in the Netherlands.
The impact of Brexit on the Irish border and its adjacent polities involves changes in trade, customs, immigration checks, local economies, services, recognition of qualifications, medical cooperation, and other matters, now that it is the only land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
The Occupied Territories Bill is a proposed Irish law that would ban and criminalize "trade with and economic support for illegal settlements in territories deemed occupied under international law", most notably Israeli settlements in Israeli-occupied territories. Violators would face fines of up to €250,000 and up to five years in prison.
Trade negotiations between the UK and the EU took place after Brexit between the United Kingdom and the European Union for a trade agreement to make trade easier than it might have been without such a deal. The deal would cover both tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. The negotiations formally ended on 24 December 2020 with an agreement approved in principle by the UK Prime Minister and the President of the European Commission. The result was the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).
The COVID-19 pandemic and its spread in Europe has had significant effects on some major EU members countries and on European Union institutions, especially in the areas of finance, civil liberties, and relations between member states.
The Frugal Four is the nickname of an informal cooperation among like-minded fiscally conservative European countries, including Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. It partly evolved as a successor of the New Hanseatic League that was set up to make up for the loss of the like-minded United Kingdom in the European political arena after Brexit. However, it was never founded as a transnational organisation like similar cooperations of countries in the European Union with shared interests.
