The Peace Prize That Went to a Continent
In 2012, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the European Union, a union of countries rather than a person. The prize pointed straight at the EU's origin story: it grew out of the wreckage of two world wars.
The idea of European unity is old, but it gained real force after World War I. In 1920 the economist John Maynard Keynes proposed a European customs union for the struggling post-war economies. The Paneuropean Union, the oldest organisation for European integration, was founded in 1923. In 1929 the French prime minister Aristide Briand called for a federal Europe to settle the long rivalry between France and Germany.
By the end of World War II, integration was seen as an antidote to the extreme nationalism that had caused the war. In a famous 1946 speech in Zurich, Winston Churchill called for a "European Union".
Coal, Steel and the Inner Six
Modern European integration began in 1948 with the "Inner Six": Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. They built a series of shared bodies by treaty, including the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community.
Those bodies merged over time. The EU itself, together with EU citizenship, was established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993. The Treaty of Lisbon, in force from 2009, gave the Union a single, explicit international legal personality.
It grew in both size and power. A further 22 states joined between 1973 and 2013, and the Union took on more and more policy areas. In 2020 the United Kingdom became the only member state ever to leave, while ten countries are aspiring or negotiating to join.
One Market, Twenty-Seven Nations
Today the EU is a political and economic union of 27 member states, located mainly in Europe. It covers 4,233,255 square kilometres and has a population of just under 452 million as of 2026. Its members produced a nominal gross domestic product of around 18.8 trillion euros in 2025, roughly one sixth of the world's economic output.
It is hard to classify. The EU is often described as sui generis, one of a kind, combining features of both a federation and a confederation.
Its cornerstone is the customs union, which led to a single market governed by shared legislation, but only in the areas where member states have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to guarantee the free movement of people, goods, services and capital, and they set common rules on trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development.
No Passports, One Currency
For travellers, the most visible change is at the border. Passport controls have been abolished for travel within the Schengen Area, so crossing between many member states can be as simple as driving down a road.
Money is shared too. The eurozone is the group of 21 EU member states that have fully adopted the Union's economic and monetary union and use the euro as their currency.
The EU also acts on the world stage. Through its Common Foreign and Security Policy, it has developed a role in external relations and defence. It keeps permanent diplomatic missions around the world and represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7 and the G20.
