We have done our final project on the European Union. It was not an institution that I knew a lot about before I did the project. The European Union a twenty-seven country organization has created immense cooperation and success all over Europe. The currency, the Euro, has been steadily getting stronger as the years go on. The cooperation between the countries has made travel and immigration throughout Europe much easier and has spurred on the economies of many European nations. It has created a Unified Europe which Churchill himself sought and deemed the “United States of Europe.” With its creation in the late, 20th century from the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993 the EU ushered in an age of prosperity and hope in Europe. Not only did this treaty create the Union itself, it also created the Euro and joined Western European countries not only politically, but economically too. This is not the only important part of being part of the European Union. In October of 1997, the Treaty of Amsterdam guaranteed the abolition of passport controls between member states guaranteeing the freedom of movement. This provision has made it easier for tourists, such as myself, to travel throughout the countries in the European Union. European Union member states are very active on the global scale too with twenty-one of twenty-seven being apart of NATO and agreeing to a policy of defense in response to unwarranted aggression. To join the European Union, it is necessary that candidate countries fit the “Copenhagen Criteria” which requires a stable democracy that respects human rights, so the former Soviet Union or Nazi Germany would not have fit the requirements of the Copenhagen Criteria. I think this is a sensible requirement to fill. It is necessary that the EU accepts countries that will further their progress and not detract from it. The EU has made a lot of great changes to Europe and has united the continent in ways that Churchill could only have hoped for when he sought his “United States of Europe.” I am glad that America’s system of the unification of very diverse areas of our country has created an example upon which Europe has built a very successful institution.