98 Fun Facts About European Union

Which is the European Union's smallest member state by population?

Malta: with over half a million people it still elects six MEPs, the minimum the EU treaties guarantee every member state.

The treaty that formally established the European Union in 1993 is named after which Dutch city?

Maastricht: the treaty also set the entry rules for a single currency, including limits of 3% of GDP on budget deficits and 60% on government debt.

In which city did six countries sign the 1957 treaty founding the European Economic Community?

Rome: the treaty signed there in March 1957 committed the six to abolishing customs duties between them and building common policies on farming, transport and trade.

Which founding member of the European Economic Community had Bonn as its capital when it signed the 1957 treaty?

West Germany: when Germany reunified in October 1990, the former East simply became Community territory, and no new member state joined.

Europe Day, on 9 May, marks a 1950 declaration by which French foreign minister?

Robert Schuman: his proposal aimed to make war between France and its old enemy 'not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible'.

The 1951 Treaty of Paris pooled which two industries, judged essential for waging war?

Coal and steel: unlike later EU treaties, it was written to last only half a century, so the community it created expired in July 2002.

Which Frenchman from a cognac-merchant family, never elected to office, is called 'the Father of Europe'?

Jean Monnet: though he left school at 16 to sell his family's cognac, France moved his remains to the Panthéon in 1988, on the centenary of his birth.

The 1965 Merger Treaty gave the shared institutions of Europe's three founding bodies what collective name?

European Communities: from July 1967 the three bodies shared a single Commission and a single Council, though each stayed legally independent.

Which three countries joined the EEC in its first enlargement, in 1973?

Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom: Britain got in only after French president Charles de Gaulle, who had vetoed its entry, left office in 1969.

Which country joined the EEC in 1981, becoming its tenth member?

Greece: it applied just a year after its military junta fell in 1974, and joining helped consolidate the country's restored democracy.

Which territory left the European club in 1985 after a dispute over fishing rights?

Greenland: it left largely over control of its fish, yet the same year it signed a fisheries deal, renewed ever since, that lets EU boats fish there for payments.

Which country was the most populous of the ten that joined the EU in its record 2004 enlargement?

Poland: with over 36 million people it was by far the largest newcomer, in an enlargement meant to end the division of Europe that followed the Second World War.

Which country became the 28th EU member state when it joined in July 2013?

Croatia: a decade after joining, it adopted the euro and entered the Schengen area on the same day, 1 January 2023.

The conditions a country must meet to join the EU are named after which city's 1993 summit?

Copenhagen: EU leaders set the conditions there in June 1993, when they agreed that former communist countries of central and eastern Europe could become members.

Which African country's bid to join the EEC was turned down in 1987 because it was not considered European?

Morocco: yet two Spanish cities on the African coast next door, Ceuta and Melilla, are part of the European Union.

Who led the European Commission from 1985 to 1995, driving the creation of the single market?

Jacques Delors: he also chaired the 1989 committee of central bankers that mapped the road to a single currency, which became the euro.

In the 2016 Brexit referendum, which of the UK's four nations voted most heavily to Remain?

Scotland: 62% voted Remain, and the next day its government said officials would start planning a second referendum on independence.

Which prime minister called the 2016 referendum on EU membership, then resigned after Leave won?

David Cameron: he had pledged the vote in a 2013 speech, and the morning after the result he said the country needed fresh leadership.

Which numbered clause of the Treaty on European Union sets out how a member state may leave?

Article 50: Theresa May's letter triggered it on 29 March 2017, but after repeated extensions the UK did not actually leave until 31 January 2020.

The EU treaty in force from December 2009 that created a permanent European Council president is named after which city?

Lisbon: it rescued reforms from the proposed European Constitution, which French and Dutch voters had rejected in 2005.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Danish voters scrapped which of their EU opt-outs in a 2022 referendum?

Defence: Denmark had won the opt-out after voters first rejected the treaty creating the EU in 1992, and in 2022 two-thirds voted to drop it.

Which currency did the euro replace one-for-one in 1999?

The ECU: EU leaders meeting in Madrid in 1995 chose the name euro for the single currency, dropping the term ECU that the treaty had used.

When euro coins arrived in 2002, which non-EU microstate's own versions showed Prince Rainier III?

Monaco: a monetary agreement lets it mint its own euros at the Paris Mint, and after Rainier died in 2005 its coins switched to Prince Albert II.

Italians voted by phone on most of their euro coin designs; which image did a minister pick for the €1?

Vitruvian Man: economy minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi chose Leonardo's drawing himself, as a symbol of money serving humanity rather than the reverse.

The euro banknotes, designed by Austrian Robert Kalina, show which two architectural features?

Windows or gateways and bridges: none show real structures, so between 2011 and 2013 the Dutch town of Spijkenisse built concrete copies of all seven bridges.

The euro sign is a stylised version of which letter, crossed by two lines?

E: the sign blends the Greek epsilon with the first letter of 'Europe', and its two parallel lines are meant to signify the currency's stability.

Which euro banknote did the European Central Bank leave out of its second 'Europa' series?

500: the ECB dropped it over concerns that it could facilitate illicit activities, though existing notes remain legal tender and keep their value.

Where is the European Central Bank based?

Frankfurt: the bank's headquarters incorporates the city's old wholesale market hall, where the Nazis gathered Frankfurt's Jews for deportation from 1941.

The European Parliament does most of its work in Brussels, but which French city is its official seat?

Strasbourg: France secured it as the official seat at the 1992 Edinburgh summit, so MEPs travel there for twelve plenary sessions a year.

Which Auschwitz survivor led the first directly elected European Parliament?

Simone Veil: as France's health minister she had pushed through the 1975 law that legalised abortion in France.

Which footballer's 1995 EU court victory let players switch clubs for free once their contracts ended?

Jean-Marc Bosman: his case reshaped football's transfer market, but legal costs and a stalled career left the Belgian player broke while later stars grew rich.

Who was elected president of the European Commission in 2019 and re-elected for 2024-2029?

Ursula von der Leyen: in 2019 EU leaders passed over the election's lead candidates, including her own party's Manfred Weber, and put her forward instead.

The 1985 Schengen Agreement set out to gradually abolish what between its signatory countries?

Border checks: just five of the ten EEC members signed it, and the deal stayed outside Community law until the Treaty of Amsterdam brought it into EU law.

Which two EU member states were still outside the Schengen Area at the start of 2026?

Cyprus and Ireland: Ireland opts out to keep its Common Travel Area with the UK, while Cyprus is bound by treaty to join but has not yet been fully admitted.

Which organisation originally designed and adopted the twelve-star flag in 1955?

The Council of Europe: it chose twelve stars as a symbol of perfection and entirety, so the number has nothing to do with how many countries belong.

The EU anthem is an arrangement of which composer's 'Ode to Joy'?

Beethoven: the anthem keeps his melody but drops Schiller's words, so it speaks to all Europeans in the universal language of music instead of one tongue.

What is the motto of the European Union, first used in 2000?

United in diversity: it came out of a contest in which school pupils across the then 15 member states sent in their ideas for a European motto.

How many official languages does the European Union have?

24: any MEP may speak in any of them, and every EU law is published in all of them, from Bulgarian to Swedish.

Which programme did Sofia Corradi inspire after her Italian university refused to recognise her Columbia degree?

Erasmus: Corradi, later nicknamed 'Mamma Erasmus', pushed the idea of credit for study abroad from 1969, and the programme finally launched in 1987.

Which honour was awarded to the EU as a whole in 2012?

Nobel Peace Prize: three earlier peace laureates, Desmond Tutu among them, protested in an open letter that the EU relied on military force for its security.

The EU's own satellite navigation system, live since 2016, is named after which scientist?

Copernicus is the name of the EU's Earth-observation programme; Galileo gives Europe independence from GPS and GLONASS.

As of 2025, which country was the European Union's largest source of imported goods?

China: it supplied more of the EU's imported goods than any other country, yet the United States bought far more of the EU's exports.

Which country's voters rejected the EU's 2007 reform treaty in 2008, then approved it in 2009?

Ireland: voters said yes in 2009 after EU leaders gave guarantees that the treaty would not touch Irish tax policy, military neutrality or abortion law.

Which country's voters rejected joining the EEC in 1972 and the EU in 1994, after its government had negotiated entry?

Norway: it stays outside the EU, yet as part of the European Economic Area it takes on EU single-market law and upholds the four freedoms.

Which country applied to join the EEC in 1987 and became an official EU candidate in 1999?

Turkey: membership talks opened in 2005, but in 2018 EU ministers declared them at a standstill over concerns about democracy and the rule of law.

What is the highest peak in the European Union?

Mont Blanc: surveyors re-measure its icy summit every two years because the height shifts with the snow cap, and in 2023 it stood at 4,805.59 metres.

The EU's 1994 banana quality rules are famously, and falsely, said to have banned what?

Bent bananas: the rules only sorted bananas into quality classes, and lower classes could have slight defects of shape, so no bendy banana was ever banned.

Which British prime minister won an EEC budget rebate, complaining of getting too little back from farm subsidies?

Margaret Thatcher: she won it at Fontainebleau in 1984, but in 2005 Tony Blair agreed to give up part of it to help pay for the EU's enlargement.

Which European Union member state has two cities on the African mainland, Ceuta and Melilla?

Spain's two autonomous cities sit on the North African coast yet are part of EU territory; Portugal captured Ceuta in 1415 before it passed to the Spanish crown.

Which river touches ten countries and flows through four national capitals, more than any other river in the world?

The Danube rises in the Black Forest and passes Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade before reaching the Black Sea.

Which country, home to Transylvania and the castle marketed as Dracula's, joined the European Union in 2007?

Romania's Bran Castle draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, though its billing as Dracula's castle is false.

Which capital has been the European Union's most populous city proper since Brexit removed London from the list?

Berlin has 3.7 million inhabitants inside its city limits, the most of any EU city, with a wider capital region of around 6.2 million.

Which 2004 entrant to the European Union was the first country to hold nationwide elections with internet voting?

Estonia introduced binding online voting for its 2005 local elections, and by 2023 more than half of all votes in its parliamentary election were cast over the internet.

Which sea is enclosed by eight European Union member states and just one other country, Russia?

The Baltic Sea is one of the world's largest brackish water basins, so cold and short of salt that shipworms cannot live there and old wooden wrecks such as the Vasa survive.

Which member state, host of the European Commission, took a then-record 541 days to form a government in 2010–11?

Belgium passed the previous record, Cambodia's 353 days, in June 2011, and a coalition under Elio Di Rupo was finally sworn in that December.

Which European Union member state shares a 1,340 km land border with Russia, running mostly through taiga forest?

Finland's eastern frontier is an external border of both the EU and NATO, and runs roughly north to south through sparsely populated country.

Which South American territory gives the European Union a land border with Brazil and houses Europe's main spaceport?

French Guiana is a full part of France, so its jungle frontier with Brazil is the longest land border France has with any country.

Which European Union member state has kept its krona since voters rejected the euro in a 2003 referendum?

Sweden is committed by treaty to adopt the euro one day, but stays out by choosing not to join the exchange-rate mechanism that must come first.

Which country's accession in 2007 made Cyrillic the third official alphabet of the European Union?

Bulgaria claims the script as a home-grown invention: it was developed in the 9th century at the Preslav Literary School, in the First Bulgarian Empire.

Which former Yugoslav republic, independent after the Ten-Day War of 1991, joined the European Union in 2004?

Slovenia joined NATO in the same year; by 2007 it was the first of the 2004 entrants to adopt the euro.

Which country froze its EU membership bid after a 1992 referendum defeat, then formally withdrew it in 2016?

Switzerland's voters turned down the European Economic Area by just 50.3% to 49.7%, so the country deals with the EU through a series of bilateral treaties instead.

Which country was granted European Union candidate status in June 2022, on the same day as Ukraine?

Moldova applied in March 2022, in the weeks after Russia invaded its neighbour, and was given candidate status less than four months later.

Which landlocked member state, which declared permanent neutrality in 1955, joined the European Union in 1995?

Austria regained its sovereignty in 1955 after a decade of Allied occupation, and two-thirds of its voters backed EU entry in a 1994 referendum.

Which currency has Hungary used since 1946, when it replaced a pengő ruined by history's worst hyperinflation?

The forint stayed in use after Hungary joined the EU in 2004, since entry to the bloc does not bring the euro automatically.

Which Russian exclave, whose main city was once Prussian Königsberg, is wedged between two European Union states?

Kaliningrad took its present name in 1946 from Soviet head of state Mikhail Kalinin, and has had EU members on both of its land borders since 2004.

Which Indian Ocean island is an outermost region of the EU and uses the euro south of the equator?

Réunion is an overseas department of France, known as Île Bourbon before 1848, and with Mayotte is one of only two eurozone areas in the Southern Hemisphere.

Which country applied to join the EU in 2009, amid a severe financial crisis, then ended the process in 2015?

Iceland's bid ran into fears for fishing, the most important sector of its economy, which opponents expected the EU's Common Fisheries Policy to harm.

Which archipelago of nine volcanic islands, about 1,400 km west of mainland Portugal, is an outermost region of the EU?

The Azores is an autonomous region of Portugal whose islands stretch for more than 600 km across the North Atlantic.

Which city became the first European Capital of Culture in 1985, an idea of culture minister Melina Mercouri?

Athens held the first title after Mercouri and her French counterpart Jack Lang argued that culture deserved the same attention as politics and economics.

Which brined cheese has held EU protected status since 2002, reserving the name for makers in its Mediterranean home?

Feta must be made from sheep's milk, with at most 30% goat's milk mixed in, so cow's-milk imitations cannot legally carry the name in the EU.

Which poet, considered the father of the Italian language, appears on Italy's €2 coin in a portrait by Raphael?

Dante shares Italy's coin set with Botticelli's Birth of Venus, the Colosseum and a Futurist sculpture by Umberto Boccioni.

The EU's prize for contemporary architecture is named after which designer of the 1929 Barcelona Pavilion?

Mies van der Rohe was the last director of the Bauhaus, and the biennial prize is run with the Barcelona foundation that bears his name.

Which Italian city, famed for its ancient Sassi cave dwellings, was a European Capital of Culture in 2019?

Matera's Sassi began as a prehistoric troglodyte settlement and were regarded as an area of poverty until the late 1980s.

Each euro banknote shows an era of architecture; which style sits on the €20, between Romanesque and Renaissance?

Gothic architecture on the €20 is a stylised illustration, like every building on euro notes, so that no existing monument is shown.

Which German poet wrote the 1785 'Ode to Joy', the poem behind the European Union's wordless anthem?

Friedrich Schiller's verses were set aside for the anthem, which is a purely instrumental arrangement made by the conductor Herbert von Karajan.

Which mournful song tradition from Portugal, traced to the 1820s, joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2011?

Fado takes its name from a word for fate, and the singers Mariza and Carlos do Carmo served as ambassadors for its UNESCO bid.

Which German city has awarded the Charlemagne Prize, for work towards European unification, since 1950?

Aachen was the capital of Charlemagne's empire and holds his shrine, and the prize is traditionally presented in its town hall on Ascension Day.

The Phoenician princess said to have given Europe its name was abducted by which god, disguised as a bull?

Zeus carried Europa to Crete, and her face is the watermark and hologram portrait on the second series of euro banknotes.

The European Parliament's electorate is the world's second-largest for any democratic vote, behind which country's?

India's parliamentary election is the only bigger one; voters in all 27 member states elect the European Parliament over the same four days.

Which politician sat in the European Parliament for two decades and led the Brexit Party to first place in 2019?

Nigel Farage was an MEP for South East England from 1999 until Britain left in 2020, spending a career inside the parliament he wanted to quit.

Which Soviet dissident gives his name to the human rights prize the European Parliament has awarded since 1988?

Andrei Sakharov's prize honours people devoted to human rights and freedom of thought, and was first shared by Nelson Mandela and Anatoly Marchenko.

Members of the European Parliament once sat alphabetically; since 1958 they have been seated according to what?

Political group replaced the alphabet as the seating rule, so members sit in blocs ranged mainly from left to right rather than by country.

Unlike most national parliaments, the European Parliament lacks which power, a prerogative of the European Commission?

Proposing new laws, the right of initiative, belongs to the Commission; Parliament may only request that it put a proposal forward.

Which group of Christian Democrats overtook the Socialists in 1999 to become the largest bloc of MEPs?

The European People's Party has remained the biggest group at every election since, and its candidate Jean-Claude Juncker took the Commission presidency in 2014.

Which German word names the system, first used in 2014, tying the Commission presidency to European election results?

Spitzenkandidat means lead candidate: each European party names its choice for Commission president before the vote, a link some national leaders contested.

Which Commission president's whole team resigned in 1999, the first to quit en masse, over corruption claims?

Jacques Santer's Commission quit after MEPs refused to sign off the 1996 accounts and a committee of independent experts reported on the allegations.

Under which name did the European Parliament begin in 1952, as 78 appointed members with no legislative powers?

The Common Assembly drew its members from national parliaments, and only took the title European Parliament in 1962.

Which French president vetoed Britain's bid to join the EEC and sparked the 'empty chair crisis' of 1965?

Charles de Gaulle distrusted the Commission's growing power and accused its president, Walter Hallstein, of acting as if he were a head of state.

Which former prime minister became the first full-time president of the European Council in 2009?

Herman Van Rompuy was chosen unanimously by the national leaders, and also became the first president of the Euro Summit.

Which principle of EU law holds that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the citizen?

Subsidiarity entered the treaties in 1992: outside its exclusive powers, the Union may act only where member states cannot sufficiently achieve a goal themselves.

Which Brussels building, named after a convent once on the site, is the European Commission's headquarters?

The Berlaymont stood empty for much of the 1990s after flaked asbestos was found in it, and stripping the material out took until 1999.

Which Dutch city, home to the International Court of Justice, also hosts Europol, the EU's police agency?

The Hague has housed Europol since it was established in 1998 to help member states share intelligence on organised crime and terrorism.

Which nickname was given to the Commission, European Central Bank and IMF as joint overseers of eurozone bailouts?

The Troika was formed to manage the bailouts of four indebted eurozone states, and its name became shorthand for the austerity demanded in return.

Which Italian economist led the European Central Bank from 2011 to 2019, then became Italy's prime minister?

Mario Draghi presided over the bank during the eurozone crisis and became famous across Europe for vowing to stop the euro from failing.

Which former commissioner served as the European Union's chief negotiator on Britain's exit from 2016 to 2021?

Michel Barnier later returned to national politics and served as Prime Minister of France from September to December 2024.

Which EU privacy law, in force since May 2018, lets regulators fine firms up to 4% of their worldwide annual turnover?

GDPR was adopted in 2016 with a two-year run-in, and its top fine is €20 million or 4% of worldwide turnover, whichever is greater.

Which charging port did an EU law make compulsory on new smartphones sold in the bloc from the end of 2024?

USB-C became the single standard under the 2022 Radio Equipment Directive, which applied the same rule to laptops from 2026.

Which alliance of central European states is named after a Hungarian castle town where three medieval kings met in 1335?

The Visegrád Group dates from a 1991 summit held in the same town, a deliberate echo of the royal congress of 1335.