User:Nightstallion/List of European Union member states by accession

This is a list of European Union member states, their dates of application and accession. It shows the growth of the European Union and its predecessors through enlargement from six members in 1952 to twenty-seven members in 2007; at least nine (possibly even more) are expected to join in its future.

The European Union per se was created on 1 November 1993 when the Treaty on European Union came into effect.^[1] Twelve of the current twenty-seven member states joined one of the Union's predecessors, either the European Coal and Steel Community (which came into existence on 23 July 1952^[2] and ceased to exist exactly 50 years later^[3]), the European Economic Community (which came into existence on 1 January 1958^[4]), or the European Community (which came into existence on 1 July 1967 as a merger of ECSC, EEC and the European Atomic Energy Community,^[5] and was one of the three pillars of the European Union until these were abolished with the Treaty of Lisbon on 1 December 2009).