The European Union is an economic and political supranational entity whose membership is no longer confined to Europe. Some see it serving as the nucleus of a world state in the distant future. The European Union's members share democratic institutions, an integrated economy and currency, and a common foreign and security policy.
The Treaty of Warsaw in 2056 saw the balance of power in the European Union swing from national legislatures to direct democracy. Today, decision-making and legislation are largely handled by the European Parliament, which is run on cyberdemocratic lines. Executive power still resides in the European Council, which represents the heads of each individual state, although the interests of France and Germany dominate much of the European Union's domestic affairs.
The European Union has the second-largest GNP after China, and a large population. The European Union controls a giant chunk of the world's financial markets and Fifth Wave industrial corporations. On average, the European Union is the most technologically advanced bloc in the system, especially in fields such as nanotechnology, software, robotics, particle physics, antimatter, and black hole research. The European Union lags somewhat in human genetic engineering, due to restrictive legislation.
The European Union moves slowly on many issues because of the requirement for its member states to reach consensus. E.U. politics tend to be dominated by a large class of reasonably well-off elderly voters in four of the most powerful member states: France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Tensions exist between the hyperdeveloped core states of Western Europe and Scandinavia and the less prosperous states on its transatlantic, southern, and eastern periphery. E.U. corporations are heavily engaged in trade and development projects in Africa and the Middle East, including large fusion-powered desalination plants.
Dominant memes in the European Union are preservationism and pan-sapient rights. Thus, E.U. law does not permit parents to create parahuman children, and is opposed to bioroid manufacture, but at the same time it supports the right of existing bioroids to be free. An ongoing political issue concerns the rights of sapient artificial intelligences to vote, reproduce, and own property. Various laws have granted them a degree of freedom, but they remain constrained.
The European Union has multiple Earth-Lunar space habitats, but has not initiated major planetary colonization or terraforming efforts for the purposes of human settlement. However, it pioneered the exploitation of mineral and energy resources on Luna and Mercuty, and over a million European Union citizens live and work offworld. To protect them, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom maintain sizable orbital and deep-space military forces, with contributions from other European Union states channeled through the European Space Control Agency. The United Kingdom has recently engaged in 'police actions' in the asteroid belt, aimed at securing British, Japanese, and African property and disrupting Martian Triad bioroid trafficking. France and Germany perform similar actions in Lagrange 5 and the near-Earth asteroids.
The European Union maintains cordial relations with all major powers and blocs. It has engaged in limited sanctions against the TSA, but France in particular maintains cordial relations with many TSA nations, and French corporations have lobbied strongly to permit continued sales to them. This has led to some minor friction between the European Union and both China and the Pacific Rim Alliance. However, the European Union has traditionally cooperated with PRA member Japan on space development in Luna and the asteroids, and diplomatic squabbles have not been allowed to interfere with business as usual.
Population: 517 million.
Gross Domestic Product: $46.0 trillion (2155).
Government Type: Federal union of individual countries, which practice diverse forms of open democracy. Several members are constitutional monarchies.
Typical Control Rating: Varies, with CR 2-3 being most typical. The European Union enforces CR 6 on the manufacture of bioroids.
The European Union is composed of multiple member nations including Albania, Andorra, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brussels, Bulgaria, Catalonia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faeroe Islands, Finland, Flanders, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Maritime Union, Montenegro, Netherlands, Newfoundland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Quebec, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, and Wallonia. Several member nations (notably France and the Netherlands) have overseas territories and possessions that are included in the Union or associated with it. Switzerland and the L4 colony of Islandia are closely integrated with the European Union, though not actual political members.