European Union

The Flag of Europe

The European Union is a union of European nation states which in one form or another has existed since 1951 when the Treaty of Paris led to the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community comprised of France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It has gone through several iterations since as the European Economic Community or EEC and then the European Union or EU. It has also gradually expanded over time to become a 27-member supranational bloc of countries which today have a common parliament, court of justice and set of rules directing almost every area of political and economic life. The expansion of the European Union has led to the movement of tens of millions of people around Europe over the last several decades, particularly since the mass enlargement of the bloc in 2004, following which millions of people from Eastern European accession states such as Poland and Lithuania migrated to wealthier countries in Western and Central Europe.

The European Union chronology of events

The signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957

Plans for the formation of a union of European states which would foster peace and greater economic integration had been mooted by European politicians such as Aristide Briand, the French foreign minister, as early as the 1920s, but they did not gain widespread support until after the Second World War. At first the plan was for a rather limited integration of coal and steel production and in 1951 the European Coal and Steel Community was established through the Treaty of Paris. It consisted of France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It quickly expanded its remit to other areas and in 1957 the Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community (EEC). In turn this would eventually become the European Union (EU) in 1993.

The EEC and the EU expanded gradually over time. Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom were the first accession states in 1973. Following the collapse of their respective countries dictatorships and military juntas in the 1970s, Greece, Spain and Portugal all joined in the 1980s, while Austria, Finland and Sweden expanded the union from twelve to fifteen nations overnight on the 1st of January 1995. By far the greatest enlargement though came on May Day 2004 when ten new states joined, most of them being former Eastern bloc countries which until the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s/early 1990s had been aligned with the Soviet Union and beyond the Iron Curtain. Only three new states have joined since, Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013, while the United Kingdom left in January 2020.

One of the core tenets of the European Union as it was established through the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 was that there should be freedom of movement and residence for all EU citizens of any member state. What this would mean in practice is that a citizen of a country such as Ireland would be able to move to a fellow member state country like Italy or Spain and live and work there without having to apply for a work visa or any other residence permit of a kind typically needed when moving from one country to another. This has led to a growing level of migration across the EU over the last thirty years as people are no longer blocked by the need for a work permit or visa, although there are still some barriers to movement.

Extent of migration associated with the European Union

The 2004 expansion of the EU

The provisions of the Maastricht Treaty and the freedom of movement which it provides for the more than 400 million people who reside within the EU has led to a very large amount of migration. This has occurred since 1993, but has been especially acute at specific times. In particular, the mass enlargement of the Union in May 2004, which saw Poland, Hungary, Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Malta and Cyprus all join the Union at the same time, led to a mass movement in the mid-2000s as people from poorer Eastern European countries migrated to Western and Central Europe in search of better living standards. For instance, it is believed that some two million Poles left their country and moved to other parts of the EU between accession in 2004 and the end of 2007. Hundreds of thousands of people left other countries. Much of this migration occurred in a three or four year burst between 2004 and 2008 as the global financial crash of 2008 led to a decline in employment opportunities in the countries of Western and Central Europe and a steep decline in economic mobility. Yet while the rate of migration dropped steeply, migration within the EU as a whole remains fluid and the total level of migration across the 27 member states over the past three decades stands in the tens of millions.

Demographic impact of the European Union

The demographic impact of all of this migration is difficult to accurately assess, in large part because some of it is rather mundane, while other elements of it have created entirely new minorities within specific countries. On the more basic side of it, it has facilitated movement between countries that share borders where people have only travelled short distances. For example, where a Frenchman from Burgundy might have had to obtain a visa and work permit to go and live in nearby Bavaria in West Germany back in the 1970s, since the inauguration of freedom of movement since 1993 he is able to do so much more easily. Similarly a Spanish woman from Galicia can quite easily move twenty kilometers south over the border to Portugal. This kind of migration might be said to have had a small, but consistent demographic impact across Europe.

More notable is where there has been mass movement across large distances and into countries where the demographic landscape has been changed in a very noticeable way as a result. A good example of this is Ireland, a country which was experiencing a major economic boom in the early 2000s when EU enlargement was at its height. In the four years between mid-2004 and mid-2008 hundreds of thousands of people from countries like Poland, Lithuania and Latvia arrived to the country in search of better paying work than was available in Eastern Europe. Many left again from 2009 onwards as Ireland was particularly badly impacted on by the financial crash of late 2008, but there was still a lasting demographic impact. For instance, the 2016 Irish census indicated that over 120,000 or 2.6% of the Irish population were people of Polish birth. These, along with other smaller groups such as the Lithuanian Irish, now make up a sizeable minority in Irish society. Similar instances of demographic change are apparent across the EU today.

Explore more about the European Union

• Tracing Your European Ancestors at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Eurovision: A Tradition of International Song at the MyHeritage blog
• History of the European Union at europa.eu
• Free Movement of Persons Within the EU at europa.eu

References

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