Economic Union (Civ6)/Civilopedia

Under the impetus of globalization, smaller nations have found themselves unable to compete with the larger states in terms of capital, labor, production, and raw materials. To that end, a number of economic unions – trade blocs composed of a common market and a customs union, often with some sort of unifying currency – began to coalesce in the 1980s. Member nations agree to common product and business laws, free cross-border movement of goods and services, joint external trade regulations, and so forth. A number have been cobbled together over the past few decades: CARICOM, the Eurasian Economic Union, Mercosur, but undoubtedly the biggest and most influential is the European Union created by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 AD.