The European Union is a result of an effort to build a more unified Europe. Fifty years ago, after World War II, Europeans were seeking out a way to prevent another war as costly as this one had been. This would have to be done in both the economic aspects as well as politically. This would be good for Europe in that everyone would benefit from this unification and more powerful as a whole. The major difficulty to this is going to be the cultural differences between the countries themselves. This could lead different countries to feel as if they have to defend their cultures from attacks and could result in a total loss for this union.
             The start of the European Coal and Steel Community was proposed by the foreign minister of France, Robert Schuman and consisted of six nations – Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The reason for this unification was to group together all of their coal and steel into a joint market. In years following, Rome Treaties established the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community, which extended this common market to all areas of the economies of these nations. In 1967, these three treaty organizations were collaborated into a single governing body called the European Community. In 1993, the passing of the Maastricht Treaty now called this body the European Union. Currently the Union is comprised of 15 countries.
             There are many strengths that resulted from this unifying of Europe. First off is the union's ability to promote economic progress by collaborating markets and even the establishment of the Euro (new currency that will be standard throughout Europe). Since it's founding in 1952, the economic community has shown to be encouraging. The European Coal and Steel Community resulted in a production increase of "75% in the ECSC nations" between 1952 and 1960. One of the biggest economic factors of this uni...