European Union widens to 27 states and Euro zone widens to 13 Countries

From January 1° th 2007 the European Union widens to 27 States with the entry of Bulgaria and Romania; from the same date the Countries of the “Euro zone“ (the area adopting the Euro as single currency) will reach the number of 13 because of the entry of Slovenia in the “Euro“ currency system. The Euro, is the unit of currency introduced in 1999 as the composite monetary unit of the members of the European Union. The European Union was founded in 1957. The founding members of EU were, in 1957, Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and Netherlands. Denmark, Ireland, United Kingdom joined in 1973; Greece in 1981; Greenland (self-governing island belonging to Denmark located between Iceland and the northeastern coastal islands of North America, largest island in the world) in 1985; Spain and Portugal in 1986. In 1990 the DDR (i.e. the East Germany, the former communist country) entered the EU because of the reunification with West Germany. Austria, Finland and Sweden followed in 1995. Ten Countries joined European Union in 2004 at once: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia,Slovenia . At that point the Countries of the European Union were 25. On 1st January 2007 Bulgaria and Romania entered the EU too. Now the European Union’s democratic Countries are 27 in total, of which 13 have adopted the Euro as single currency. The current candidates for entering the union are: Croatia, country located in the Balkan area (formerly part of Yugoslavia), Macedonia, country in southeast Europe independent from Yugoslavia since 1991, ancient kingdom of Philip II and Alexander the Great in the Balkans, and Turkey, country in western Asia and southeastern Europe between the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea.