The following is a guest post by Theresa Papademetriou who is the Law Library of Congress Senior Foreign Law Specialist for the European Union, Greece, and Cyprus. Theresa has previously blogged on “European Union: Where is the Beef?“, on “New Greek Regulation Designed to Fight Tax Evasion Problem: Will it Work?” and on “The Cyprus Banking Crisis and its Aftermath: Bank Depositors be Aware“.
The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union. It has grown significantly since the establishment of its founding treaties. These treaties are the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community, the 1957 European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM), and the European Economic Community (EEC) of the same year. The EEC later became European Community (EC) which was succeeded by the EU.