European Union

The European Union (EU) is a special character since it's not a country but a union with 27 members. They were created to assure peace within all of Europe after World War II, and they manage all EU members.

In 31 January, 2020, the United Kingdom became the first member ever to leave the EU.

Appearance
They are often represented wearing a light brown suit with a blue tie since they are here mainly for business. They also sometimes have a halo of stars.

Personality
They are nice to every member and always try their best to be a good mediator. Just like their father, they're a workaholic, their not the nicest person out there, but they always have your back, they're loyal. They are a bit spoiled, but not entitled. They can be a bit rude if you interrupt them, or make them mad, but they are usually a good person.

Interests
Create the United States of Europe and ensure the territorial union of all EU members. Protecting the ones they love and care about, working, they like to try new things, it just takes time. They also like traveling.

Flag Meaning
The flag has a blue background with twelve yellows stars which symbolize the unity between the countries members (the number is not related to the number of members at its beginning). The number also appeals to a perfect balance like the twelve months, hours, etc.

European Coal and Steel Community
After World War II too European countries wanted to find a way to guarantee peace into the continent. The 8 April 1951 Luxembourg, the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands signs the Treaty of Paris which mark the creation of the ECSC. Their goal was to share the same: market goals and institutions, so the countries would be interdependent.

Maastricht Treaty
The Maastricht Treaty (officially the Treaty of the European Union or TEU) is, together with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, one of the founding treaties of the European Union. Signed in the Dutch city (Netherlands) of Maastricht on February 7, 1992, entered into force on November 1, 1993 and was conceived as the political culmination of a set of regulations, binding on all Member States of the European Union, both for future members and for the signatory states at the time of the treaty.

The original TEU was made up of a series of pre-existing treaties, three of them then in force, with the names of the respective European Communities to which they gave rise: the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, the Treaty establishing the Community European Atomic Energy and the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community. These three treaties are considered as the community pillar (or first pillar) and the TEU adds two other new political-legal pillars, which it regulates: the common foreign and security policy (or second pillar, CFSP) and justice and home affairs (JAI) or third pillar. The complex was thus conceived as a Greek temple, made up of three great integration and functioning pillars that raised a pediment, the new European Union, which presided over the entire community landscape and integrated it into a superstructure.

The Maastricht Treaty has been modified by the Treaties of Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon.

Lisbon Treaty
The Lisbon Treaty is an international agreement that modifies the two treaties that form the constitutional basis of the European Union (EU). It was signed by the EU Member States on December 13, 2007 and entered into force on December 1, 2009. It amends the Maastricht Treaty (1992), known in updated form as the Treaty of the European Union (2007) or TEU, and the Treaty of Rome (1957), known in updated form as the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2007) or TFEU. Consequently, the formal title of the text is the Lisbon Treaty, which modifies the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community.

With this treaty, the EU has its own legal personality to sign international agreements at the community level. It also introduces numerous reforms, among which the following stand out: qualified majority voting that seeks to reduce the chances of stagnation in the Council of the European Union, a European Parliament with greater weight through the extension of the joint decision procedure with the Council of the EU, the elimination of the three pillars of the European Union, and the creation of the figures of President of the European Council and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to provide greater coherence and continuity to the policies of the EU. The Lisbon Treaty also makes the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union legally binding.

Brexit
The "Brexit" (in short) a political process that achieved the abandonment by the United Kingdom of its status as a Member State of the European Union. Following a referendum held on June 23, 2016 in which 51.9 per cent of voters supported leaving the European Union, the British government invoked Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, initiating a two-year process that was to conclude with the departure from the United Kingdom on March 29, 2019. This period was first extended until April 12, 2019. The period was extended again until October 31, 2019. For the third and last time, the The deadline was extended again until January 31, 2020. After that date, after the Withdrawal Agreement was finally approved at 00:00 on Friday, January 31, the United Kingdom automatically left the European Union at 23:00 (British time) of that day. By virtue of this agreement, there will be a transitional period until December 31, 2020 by which the United Kingdom will remain in the European market and citizens and companies will not notice differences. The United Kingdom and the EU must negotiate a new commercial relationship in the following months that are still in force.

Politics
'''The policy of the European Union is outlined in an essentially different way from that of other governmental entities, due to the unique nature of the Union. It is a fundamental premise for the historical, legal and political basis on which the entity is based. Given that the Union is in no way a sovereign State, according to the parameters of international law or contemporary political philosophy, neither can the factors that determine the exercise of community power, nor the mechanisms through which it is assimilated, be assimilated. it displays, neither the vectors in which it is shaped and channeled, nor the agents that hold it or apply it.'''

Government
The European Union is a political community of Law that is governed under a representative democracy regime and is legally constituted as an international organization subject to Law and with its own legal personality different from that of the States that compose it. Its powers and competences are delimited in the Treaties that help legally and that make up its material constitution, and are exercised through the community management method.

The government system by which the Union is governed and which orders and frames the legal exercise of its powers and competences is of the community type, but its particularities and the degree of development that this political organization has undergone make it especially complex and sophisticated. The Union has been developing from its origins a political and legal system, the European Community, which is unique in the world. This system is driven by mechanisms and internal operating procedures that have undergone historical evolution, until today it forms an unprecedented transnational government system. Coexisting and integrating tensions and supranational elements with others closer to the classic intergovernmental method of international relations, the Union has been incorporating them into a strongly institutional and structured legal-political framework at the service of a dynamic of accentuated regional integration. The dynamic towards a multinational federalism is pronounced in the European Union, but much discussed and equally contrasted in practice by the dominant intergovernmentalism in certain areas of its politics.

Main Members (Founders)

 * Germany
 * France
 * Luxembourg
 * Italy
 * Belgium
 * Netherlands

Other Members

 * Austria
 * Bulgaria
 * Croatia
 * Cyprus
 * Czech Republic
 * Denmark
 * Estonia
 * Finland
 * Greece
 * Hungary
 * Ireland
 * Latvia
 * Lithuania
 * Malta
 * Poland
 * Portugal
 * Romania
 * Slovakia
 * Slovenia
 * Spain
 * Sweden

Former Members

 * United Kingdom

Family

 * Austria — aunt
 * Canada — half-brother
 * France — mother
 * Germany — father
 * NATO
 * ASEAN
 * Portugal — uncle
 * Romania — uncle
 * Spain — aunt
 * United Nations — brother/sister-in-law
 * United States — father-in-law

Friends

 * Antarctica
 * Arctic
 * ASEAN
 * Australia
 * Bosnia and Herzegovina
 * Canada
 * Georgia
 * Greenland
 * Iceland
 * India
 * Japan
 * Montenegro
 * NATO
 * New Zealand
 * North Macedonia
 * Norway
 * South Korea
 * Ukraine
 * United Nations
 * African Union

Neutral

 * Albania
 * Armenia
 * Andorra
 * Azerbaijan
 * Belarus
 * Egypt
 * England
 * Faroe Islands
 * Israel
 * Kazakhstan
 * Liechtenstein
 * Moldova
 * Monaco
 * Northern Ireland
 * Russia
 * San Marino
 * Scotland
 * Serbia
 * Switzerland
 * Türkiye
 * United Kingdom — Traitor! Why would you leave me?
 * United States
 * Vatican City
 * Wales

Enemies

 * China
 * USSR — the reason for the creation of the European Union was to keep out commies like you.
 * Third Reich

Past Versions

 * Western Union (alliance)
 * Western European Union

Trivia

 * A typical joke about Brexit is that the United Kingdom does not have enough power to seize the European Union and constantly calls it the "Fourth Reich", the "Third French Empire" or the "Second Carolingian Empire" (referring to its envy for the power that  Germany and  France have in the EU).