The purpose of this paper is to make a general overview of the main differences between the United Nations and the European Union. According to this aim, this essay will be divided into five parts: after a brief introduction, I‘m going to deal with three aspects in which these two entities differ, namely their Origins and the relationship with the Sovereignty of the member states, the means to implement decisions in the Security field and the decision-making process within the bodies of the two entities. Then I will try to make some conclusions based on the areas compared.
             The most important international organizations in the world today are the United Nations (UN) and its affiliated bodies, and the European Union (EU). Both of them were born in the aftermath of the second World War, in order to avoid new massacres and destructions. However they have different origins and have developed different aims and structures.
             On the one side the United Nations officially came into existence in 1945. The aim of this Organization, as the preamble of the Charter claims, is to prevent the future generations from the burden of War. In addition Art.1 of the Charter provides four main purposes, namely to maintain international peace and security, to develop friendly relations among nations; to achieve international co-operation in solving international problems; to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends. As far as sovereignty is concerned it can be said that the United Nations is an INTER-GOVERNAMENTAL Organization made of independent sovereign states. Thus the UN Charter is one of the strongest guardian of sovereignty, enshrining that principle as one of its central pillars. However most of the problems the world faces today are of such complexity that they cannot be addressed by any single nation acting alone. Therefore the UN is a global forum where countries come together to address c...