November 1 - The European Union is Established

This Day in History: 1 November 2020

 

1 November 1993

 

27 years ago, today, the European Union was established, when the Maastricht Treaty came into effect. This was drafted in 1991 by delegates from the European Community meeting at Maastricht in the Netherlands, whose main architects were Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand, and was officially signed in 1992. The agreement called for a strengthened European parliament, the creation of a central European bank and common foreign and security policies. As well as this, it laid the groundwork for the establishment of a single European currency, known as the 'euro', and established European citizenship.

 

By 1993, 12 nations had ratified the Maastricht Treaty and joined the European Union: Great Britain, France, Germany, the Irish Republic, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. Two years later, in 1995, Austria, Finland and Sweden became members of the EU. After suffering through centuries of bloody and destructive conflict, the nations of Western Europe were finally united in the spirit of economic cooperation. However, in 2016, in what became popularly known as 'Brexit', the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. They officially left in January 2020, and currently, the nation is in a transitional phase until December 2020.

 

Want to find out more about the history of the EU? Click here for more information, or here for more about the history of Brexit.