European supranational organization dedicated to increasing and strengthening among its member states. The European Union was on November 1, 1993, when the Treaty on European Union, or Treaty of Maastricht, was ratified by the 12 members of the European (EC) - Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. Upon ratification of the treaty, the countries of the EC became members of the EU, and the EC became the -making body of the EU.

Under the Treaty on European Union, European citizenship was to citizens of each member state. Customs and agreements were to allow European citizens greater freedom to live, work, or study in any of the member states, and border controls were . A of a common European (European monetary union) was set for 1997.

Background
to November 1993, the European Union was called the European . The EC was composed of what originally were three separate organizations: the European Coal and Steel (ECSC), in 1951; and the European (EEC, often referred to as the Common Market) and the European Atomic (Euratom), both set up in 1957. The three merged in 1967, the EC and headquarters in Brussels.