The European Union

This Library Note provides an outline of the history and development of the European Union. It explains the key treaties that led to the formation of the EU, describes the enlargement of the Union and gives a brief overview of the major European institutions. It then broadly looks at EU law and also provides a short description of the EU budget. The Note includes a selection of key statistics comparing the EU to the US, Japan, China and Russia, and a range of key indicators for each of the current EU member states and candidate states.