page_title: History of the European Union
section_title: Ideas of European unity before 1945
hierarchical_section_title: History of the European Union / Ideas of European unity before 1945
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of Europe as a queen, printed by Sebastian Munster in Basel in 1570.
context_page_description: The European Union is a geo-political entity covering a large portion of the European continent. It is founded upon numerous treaties and has undergone expansions and secessions that have taken it from 6 member states to 27, a majority of the states in Europe.
  Apart from the ideas of federation, confederation, or customs union such as Winston Churchill's 1946 call for a "United States of Europe", the original development of the European Union was based on a supranational foundation that would "make war unthinkable and materially impossible" and reinforce democracy amongst its members as laid out by Robert Schuman and other leaders in the Schuman Declaration and the Europe Declaration. This principle was at the heart of the European Coal and Steel Community, the Treaty of Paris, and later the Treaty of Rome which established the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. The ECSC expired in 2002, while the EAEC maintains a distinct legal identity despite sharing members and institutions.
  The Maastricht Treaty created the European Union with its pillars system, including foreign and home affairs alongside the European Community.
context_section_description: The original development of the European Union was based on a supranational foundation that would "make war unthinkable and materially impossible" 
  A peaceful means of some consolidation of European territories used to be provided by dynastic unions; less common were country-level unions, such as the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austro-Hungarian Empire.
  In the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle of 1818, Tsar Alexander, as the most advanced internationalist of the day, suggested a kind of permanent European union and even proposed the maintenance of international military forces to provide recognised states with support against changes by violence.
  An example of an organisation formed to promote the association of states between the wars to promote the idea of European union is the Pan-Europa movement.
caption: Europa regina in Sebastian Münster's "Cosmographia", 1570.
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