What Is the European Union (EU)?

 The European Union (EU) is a political and economic grouping of 27 European countries. The EU promotes democratic values and is one of the world's most powerful trade blocs. Nineteen of the countries share the euro as their official currency.

The EU grew out of a desire to strengthen international economic and political co-operation on the European continent in the wake of World War II. The European Economic Community, launched in 1957, became the European Union in 1993 with the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty deepening the integration of members' foreign, security and internal affairs policies. The EU established a common market the same year to promote the free movement of goods, services, people, and capital across its internal borders.

The EU's gross domestic product (GDP) totaled $15.3 trillion in 2020, which was $5.7 trillion less than the United States' $21 trillion GDP, according to World Bank figures.

The European Union (EU) is a political and economic grouping of 27 countries committed to shared democratic values.
The euro is the shared official currency of 19 EU members known collectively as the euro area or eurozone.
In the 2016 'Brexit' referendum, the U.K. voted to leave the EU. The U.K. officially left the EU in 2020.

History of the European Union (EU)
The EU began as the European Coal and Steel Community, which was founded in 1950 and had just six members: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It became the European Economic Community in 1957 under the Treaty of Rome and subsequently the European Community(EC).

The EC initially focused on a common agricultural policy and the elimination of customs barriers. Denmark, Ireland, and the U.K. joined in 1973 in the first wave of expansion. Direct elections to the European Parliament began in 1979.

In 1986, the Single European Act embarked on a six-year plan to create a common European market by harmonizing national regulations.

The Maastricht Treaty took effect in 1993, replacing the EC with the European Union (EU). The euro debuted as a common single currency for participating EU members on Jan. 1, 1999.8 Denmark and the U.K. negotiated "opt-out" provisions that permitted them to retain their own currencies.

Several newer members of the EU have also either not yet met the criteria for adopting the euro or chosen to opt out.

European Debt Crisis

The EU and the European Central Bank struggled to deal with high sovereign debt and sluggish growth in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Greece in the wake of the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. Greece and Ireland received financial bailouts from the EU in 2010 conditioned on fiscal austerity. Portugal followed in 2011, along with a second Greek bailout in 2012.
The crisis abated after the European Union and the European Central Bank adopted a series of measures to support the sovereign and banking-sector debt of the affected countries.