How did the European Union form?

The European Union was built step by step after World War II. It began with a pooling of coal and steel industries among six countries, widened into a common market, and was formally named and created by the Maastricht Treaty. That treaty was signed on 7 February 1992 and entered into force on 1 November 1993. The Library of Congress describes the EU as the latest stage in an integration process begun after the war to promote peace and economic recovery. [1] [2]

After the war, European nations resolved that such devastation should not happen again. An early step was the Benelux Treaty, signed in 1944 and in force from 1948, which created a market without internal borders for Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. [3]

On 9 May 1950, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman announced a plan for a European Coal and Steel Community under a common High Authority. The idea was to pool strategic resources so that war between historic rivals such as France and Germany would be, in the declaration's words, not merely unthinkable but materially impossible. Coal and steel were chosen because they were essential to reconstruction and had been crucial to war-making. [4] [3]

The Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community was signed in Paris on 18 April 1951 by Belgium, West Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, known as the Inner Six. It entered into force on 23 July 1952 and created the first supranational European organisation. Its High Authority, Common Assembly, Special Council of Ministers and Court of Justice were forerunners of today's Commission, Parliament, Council and Court of Justice. [4]

A conference at Messina in June 1955 developed the idea of a common market. The Treaties of Rome, signed on 25 March 1957, created the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community, and took effect on 1 January 1958. They aimed at free circulation of goods, persons, services and capital. In 1965 the Commission and Council were set up as single institutions serving all three communities. [4] [3]

By 1968 the EEC members had abolished customs duties, but differing national laws still hindered trade. The Single European Act, in force in 1987, was the first major treaty reform and set a goal of a single market by 1 January 1993. Council of the EU material notes that integration had slowed in the 1970s amid inflation and unemployment before reviving in the mid-1980s. [3] [5]

At Maastricht, then 12 member states negotiated the treaty that gave the Union its name. It built the EU on the existing communities and added two pillars, one on common foreign and security policy and one on justice and home affairs. It also set the path to economic and monetary union and a single currency. Later treaties, at Amsterdam (1997), Nice (2001) and Lisbon (2007), extended the Union's powers and reworked its legal framework. [5] [3]