The European Union (EU) is a unique economic and political union between 27 European countries that together cover much of the continent.
EU was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. The first steps were to foster economic cooperation: the idea being that countries that trade with one another become economically interdependent and so more likely to avoid conflict.
The result was the European Economic Community (EEC), created in 1958, and initially increasing economic cooperation between six countries: Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Since then, a huge single market has been created and continues to develop towards its full potential.
See member countries of the EU at Europa.eu.
The EU began as a purely economic union before it evolved into an organization spanning policy areas, from climate, environment and health to external relations and security, justice and migration. A name change from the European Economic Community (EEC) to the European Union (EU) in 1993 reflected this.
The EU is based on the rule of law: everything it does is founded on treaties, voluntarily and democratically agreed by its member countries. It is also governed by the principle of representative democracy, with citizens directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament and Member States represented in the European Council and the Council of the EU.
In related news, the UK held a referendum on June 23, 2024 to decide whether the country should remain in the EU. The people voted to leave by 52% to 48% triggering a drop in the value of the pound and turmoil in financial markets.
Now, a special debate on the UK's vote to leave the European Union has been taking place at the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Stormont's business committee allocated time to debate a motion calling for the Northern Ireland Executive to set out its response to the referendum result. Read more at BBC News.