The European Union (EU) is a supranational union of 27 member states that are party to the EU's founding treaties, and thereby subject to the privileges and obligations of membership. They have agreed by the treaties to share their own sovereignty through the institutions of the European Union in certain aspects of government. State governments must agree unanimously in the Council for the union to adopt some policies; for others, collective decisions are made by qualified majority voting. These obligations and sharing of sovereignty (also known by some as "pooling of sovereignty") within the EU make it unique among international organisations, as it has established its own legal order which by the provisions of the founding treaties is both legally binding and supreme on all the member states (after a landmark ruling of the ECJ in 1964). A founding principle of the union is subsidiarity, meaning that decisions are taken collectively if and only if they cannot realistically be taken individually.

Each member country appoints to the European Commission a European commissioner. The commissioners do not represent their member state, but instead work collectively in the interests of all the member states within the EU.

In the 1950s, six core states founded the EU's predecessor European Communities (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany). The remaining states have acceded in subsequent enlargements. To accede, a state must fulfil the economic and political requirements known as the Copenhagen criteria, which require a candidate to have a democratic government and free-market economy together with the corresponding freedoms and institutions, and respect for the rule of law. Enlargement of the Union is also contingent upon the consent of all existing members and the candidate's adoption of the existing body of EU law, known as the acquis communautaire.

The United Kingdom, which had acceded to the EU's predecessor in 1973, ceased to be an EU member state on 31 January 2020, in a political process known as Brexit. No other member state has withdrawn from the EU and none has been suspended, although some dependent territories or semi-autonomous areas have left.

List

Member state ISO Accession Population Area(km2) Largestcity GDP(US$ M) GDP (PPP)per cap.at purchasing power parity, per capita, in international dollars (rounded) Currency Gini HDI MEPs Officiallanguages AT Vienna 73,050 euro 20 German BE Founder Brussels 73,221 euro 22 DutchFrenchGerman BG Sofia 39,185 euro 17 Bulgarian HR Zagreb 48,811 euro 12 Croatian De facto (though not de jure) excludes the disputed territory of Northern Cyprus and the UN Buffer Zone. See: Cyprus problem. CY Nicosia 59,858 euro 6 GreekTurkishThe Turkish language is not an official language of the European Union. CZ Prague 56,686 koruna 21 CzechOfficially recognised minority languages: Excludes the autonomous regions of Greenland, which left the then-EEC in 1985, and the Faroe Islands. DK Copenhagen 83,454 krone 15 Danish EE Tallinn 48,008 euro 7 Estonian Includes Åland, an autonomous region of Finland. FI Helsinki 64,657 euro 15 FinnishSwedish Includes the 101 departments (Metropolitan France + all Overseas Departments: Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte and La Réunion) and the overseas collectivity of Saint Martin, which are part of the European Union.

Excludes the other overseas collectivities and French Austral and Antarctic Lands which are not part of the European Union. FR Founder Paris 65,940 euro 81 French DE FounderOn , the territory of the former German Democratic Republic acceded to the Federal Republic of Germany to form present-day Germany, automatically becoming part of the EU. Berlin 70,930 euro 96 German GR Athens 46,800 euro 21 Greek HU Budapest 46,807 forint 21 Hungarian IE Dublin 127,750 euro 14 EnglishIrish IT Founder Rome 60,993 euro 76 Italian LV Riga 43,527 euro 9 Latvian LT Vilnius 53,624 euro 11 Lithuanian LU Founder Luxembourg 151,146 euro 6 LuxembourgishWhile Luxembourgish is the national language, it is not an official language of the European Union.FrenchGerman MT Valletta 72,942 euro 6 MalteseEnglish Excludes the three special municipalities of the Netherlands (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba). Also excludes the three other constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten). NL Founder Amsterdam 81,495 euro 31 Dutch PL Warsaw 51,629 złoty 53 Polish Includes the autonomous regions of the Azores and Madeira. PT Lisbon 51,853 euro 21 PortugueseMirandese is an officially recognized minority language within Portugal, awarded an official right-of-use. It is not an official language of the European Union. RO Bucharest 47,204 leu 33 Romanian SK Bratislava 45,632 euro 15 Slovak SI Ljubljana 55,684 euro 9 Slovene Includes the autonomous community of the Canary Islands; the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla; and the territories comprising the plazas de soberanía. ES Madrid 55,089 euro 61Spanish SE Stockholm 71,731 krona 21 Swedish

Notes

Former member state + Country ISO Accession Withdrawal Population Area(km2) Largestcity GDP(US$ M) GDP (PPP)per cap. Currency Gini HDI Officiallanguages United Kingdom GB1 January 197331 January 2020London62,574sterlingEnglish

Outermost regions

There are a number of overseas member state territories which are legally part of the EU, but have certain exemptions based on their remoteness; see Overseas Countries and Territories Association. These "outermost regions" have partial application of EU law and in some cases are outside of Schengen or the EU VAT area—however they are legally within the EU.Regional policy & outermost regions , European Commission They all use the euro as their currency.

Territory Member state Location Areakm2 Population GDP per capita(EU=100) EU VAT Area Schengen AreaAzoresPortugalAtlantic Ocean2,333236,44066.7Canary IslandsSpainAtlantic Ocean7,4472,202,04893.7French GuianaFranceSouth America84,000295,38550.5GuadeloupeFranceCaribbean Sea1,710378,56150.5MadeiraPortugalAtlantic Ocean795250,76994.9MartiniqueFranceCaribbean Sea1,080349,92575.6MayotteFranceIndian Ocean374320,901RéunionFranceIndian Ocean2,512885,70061.6Saint MartinFranceCaribbean Sea5231,47761.9

Abbreviations Abbreviations have been used as a shorthand way of grouping countries by their date of accession. EU15 includes the fifteen countries in the European Union from 1 January 1995 to 30 April 2004. The EU15 comprised Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom. Eurostat still uses this expression. EU19 includes the countries in the EU15 as well as the Central European member countries of the OECD: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovak Republic. EU11 is used to refer to the Central, Southeastern Europe and Baltic European member states that joined in 2004, 2007 and 2013: in 2004 the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia; in 2007 Bulgaria, Romania; and in 2013 Croatia. EU27 means all the member states. It was originally used in this sense from 2007 until Croatia's accession in 2013, and during the Brexit negotiations from 2017 until the United Kingdom's withdrawal on 31 January 2020 it came to mean all members except the UK. EU28 meant all the member states from the accession of Croatia in 2013 to the withdrawal of the United Kingdom in 2020.

Additionally, other abbreviations have been used to refer to countries which had limited access to the EU labour market.

A8 is eight of the ten countries that joined the EU in 2004, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. A2 is the countries that joined the EU in 2007, Bulgaria and Romania.

Changes in membership Enlargement

According to the Copenhagen criteria, membership of the European Union is open to any European country that is a stable, free-market liberal democracy that respects the rule of law and human rights. Furthermore, it has to be willing to accept all the obligations of membership, such as adopting all previously agreed law (the 170,000 pages of acquis communautaire) and switching to the euro. For a state to join the European Union, the prior approval of all current member states is required. In addition to enlargement by adding new countries, the EU can also expand by having territories of member states, which are outside the EU, integrate more closely (for example in respect to the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles) or by a territory of a member state which had previously seceded and then rejoined (see withdrawal below).

Suspension

There is no provision to expel a member state, but TEU Article 7 provides for the suspension of certain rights. Introduced in the Treaty of Amsterdam, Article 7 outlines that if a member persistently breaches the EU's founding principles (liberty, democracy, human rights and so forth, outlined in TEU Article 2) then the European Council can vote to suspend any rights of membership, such as voting and representation. Identifying the breach requires unanimity (excluding the state concerned), but sanctions require only a qualified majority.Suspension clause , Europa glossary. Retrieved 22 December 2017

The state in question would still be bound by the obligations treaties and the Council acting by majority may alter or lift such sanctions. The Treaty of Nice included a preventive mechanism whereby the council, acting by majority, may identify a potential breach and make recommendations to the state to rectify it before action is taken against it as outlined above. However, the treaties do not provide any mechanism to expel a member state outright.Athanassiou, Phoebus (December 2009) Withdrawal and Expulsion from the EU and EMU, Some Reflections (PDF), European Central Bank. Retrieved 8 September 2011

Withdrawal

Prior to the Lisbon Treaty, there was no provision or procedure within any of the Treaties of the European Union for a member state to withdraw from the European Union or its predecessor organisations. The Lisbon Treaty changed this and included the first provision and procedure of a member state to leave the bloc. The procedure for a state to leave is outlined in TEU Article 50 which also makes clear that "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements". Although it calls for a negotiated withdrawal between the seceding state and the rest of the EU, if no agreement is reached two years after the seceding state notifying of its intention to leave, it would cease to be subject to the treaties anyway (thus ensuring a right to unilateral withdrawal). There is no formal limit to how much time a member state can take between adopting a policy of withdrawal, and actually triggering Article 50.

In a referendum in June 2016, the United Kingdom voted to withdraw from the EU. The UK government triggered Article 50 on 29 March 2017. After an extended period of negotiation and internal political debate the UK eventually withdrew from the EU on 31 January 2020.

Prior to 2016, no member state had voted to withdraw. However, French Algeria, Greenland and Saint-Barthélemy did cease being part of the EU (or its predecessor) in 1962, 1985, and 2012, respectively, due to status changes. The situation of Greenland being outside the EU while still subject to an EU member state had been discussed as a template for the pro-EU regions of the UK remaining within the EU or its single market.Could a 'reverse Greenland' arrangement keep Scotland and Northern Ireland in the EU? , London School of Economics 7 July 2016