The European Union (EU) started out life as the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 with six member countries, and after several name changes, along with a host of expansions over the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st, it is now a collective of 27 European countries, with another handful of neighbouring nations also attempting to join the union. After the United States, the EU is the next biggest economic and political powerbase on the planet. It's 500 million citizens live in some of the most industrialised lands, with US$18 billion of the World's US$60 billion annual GDP earned by the 27 EU member states. To further strengthen their hand, 16 of the EU's nations have chosen to use a single currency, the Euro, with more member states expected to follow suit when the economic conditions are appropriate for them to do so.

The European Union is known as a business-friendly free market venture, with common political policy shared amongst the 27 member countries on issues such as trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development. The EU has various laws which enable the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital behind it's borders, and every five years a new European Parliament is elected by member states' citizens to help develop those laws, which works in tandem with both the European Commission and The Council of the European Union (Council of Ministers), amongst many other EU institutions.

In recent years, globalised politics has openly become as important as economics to the union's leadership, with the EU taking a leading role for it's members collectively within the WTO, G8, G20, UN and amongst many other global economic, civil and political organisations. Some people see this as a positive move, but others believe that the EU is becoming too powerful, and is assuming overall control from the 27 national parliaments, which are beginning to loose their separate identity's and overall purpose.