Prior to the adoption of the current convention that includes mountain divides, the border between Europe and Asia had been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity, but always as a series of rivers, seas, and straits that were believed to extend an unknown distance east and north from the Mediterranean Sea without the inclusion of any mountain ranges. The war left more than 16 million civilians and military dead. Around 190 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurasia split apart due to the widening of the Atlantic Ocean. Malta was considered an island of Northwest Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well. After World War II the map of Europe was redrawn at the Yalta Conference and divided into two blocs, the Western countries and the communist Eastern bloc, separated by what was later called by Winston Churchill an "Iron Curtain". Important European herbivores are snails, larvae, fish, different birds, and mammals, like rodents, deer and roe deer, boars, and living in the mountains, marmots, steinbocks, chamois among others. Der Europarat – englisch Council of Europe (CoE), französisch Conseil de l’Europe (CdE) – ist eine am 5. [136], The 17th century in central and parts of eastern Europe was a period of general decline;[137] the region experienced more than 150 famines in a 200-year period between 1501 and 1700. Von 2000 bis 2003 standen als Heranführungshilfen für die zehn beitrittswilligen mittel- und osteuropäischen Länder jährlich 3,12 Mrd. The prevalent form of government in Europe is parliamentary democracy, in most cases in the form of Republic; in 1815, the prevalent form of government was still the Monarchy. These revolutions were eventually put down by conservative elements and few reforms resulted. [171] In 1932–1933, under Stalin's leadership, confiscations of grain by the Soviet authorities contributed to the second Soviet famine which caused millions of deaths;[172] surviving kulaks were persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour. [255] According to some sources,[256] this rate is higher among Muslims in Europe. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and northeast are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the southeast, the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out. Euro und die anderen Euro-Länder 77 Mrd. For instance, Edinburgh is warmer than Belgrade during the coldest month of the year, although Belgrade is around 10° of latitude farther south. Structural change in Europe´s geo-economy." During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth, culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th century. in World Cargo News, 17 December 2019; Hospers, Gert-Jan "Beyond the blue banana? [148][149] Napoleonic rule resulted in the further dissemination of the ideals of the French Revolution, including that of the nation-state, as well as the widespread adoption of the French models of administration, law, and education. (Michael Adams, Trans. [46] Other hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca, Spain. Around 1.1 billion years ago, Baltica and Arctica (as part of the Laurentia block) became joined to Rodinia, later resplitting around 550 million years ago to reform as Baltica. Der Europarat ist ein Forum für Debatten über allgemeine europäische Fragen. Α.Ε", "Η ΝΕΑ ΚΛΙΜΑΚΑ ΦΟΡΟΛΟΓΙΑΣ ΕΙΣΟΔΗΜΑΤΟΣ", "In European crisis, Iceland emerges as an island of recovery", "Iceland starts to recover its voice after financial crisis", "Economic Crisis: The Global Impact of a Greek Default", "Wells Fargo Economics-Greece on the Brink", "Verbatim of the remarks made by Mario Draghi", "Thomas Piketty: 'Germany Has Never Repaid its Debts. An arc of uplands also exists along the north-western seaboard, which begins in the western parts of the islands of Britain and Ireland, and then continues along the mountainous, fjord-cut spine of Norway. The Romanians and the Turkic Nomads North of the Danube Delta from the Tenth to the Mid-Thirteenth Century, Brill, 2009. [212] [235] From Britain, it gradually spread throughout Europe. Greece was followed by Rome, which left its mark on law, politics, language, engineering, architecture, government and many more key aspects in western civilisation. It includes all European states except for Belarus and Vatican City. An estimated 36% of Greeks lived below the poverty line in 2014. The southern regions are more mountainous, while moving north the terrain descends from the high Alps, Pyrenees, and Carpathians, through hilly uplands, into broad, low northern plains, which are vast in the east. [86] In Europe itself, the Church organised the Inquisition against heretics. Bis Ende 2011 hatte Griechenland für fällige Kredite 380 Millionen Euro Zinsen an Deutschland überwiesen. To the East, the Kievan Rus expanded from its capital in Kyiv to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to the 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000. Europe's present shape dates to the late Tertiary period about five million years ago.[217]. On 24 September, the Soviet Union attacked the Baltic countries and later, Finland. [72], While the Roman empire in the west continued to decline, Roman traditions and the Roman state remained strong in the predominantly Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for various national parks. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, prompting France and the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on 3 September, opening the European Theatre of World War II. Glaciation during the most recent ice age and the presence of man affected the distribution of European fauna. Around 1715, Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of the Ob River and the Irtysh River, a major tributary of the former, as components of a series of partly-joined waterways taking the boundary between Europe and Asia from the Turkish Straits and the Don River all the way to the Arctic Ocean. Although over half of Europe's original forests disappeared through the centuries of deforestation, Europe still has over one quarter of its land area as forest, such as the broadleaf and mixed forests, taiga of Scandinavia and Russia, mixed rainforests of the Caucasus and the Cork oak forests in the western Mediterranean. Once they were found in most parts of Europe. There exists a political movement favoring the evolution of the European Union into a single federation encompassing much of the continent. [193] Several post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe displaced a total of about 20 million people,[194] in particular, German-speakers from all over Eastern Europe. ... l'Arc méditerranéen, la diagonale continentale, la mer du Nord, les nouveaux Länder allemands et les régions ultrapériphériques. The European Union is now the largest economy in the world. [143] According to Peter Barrett, "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century (towards the end of the Renaissance), introducing a new understanding of the natural world. [286], Sport in Europe tends to be highly organized with many sports having professional leagues. The mapmakers continued to differ on the boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. [164], Two world wars and an economic depression dominated the first half of the 20th century. Europe has about 225 indigenous languages,[268] mostly falling within three Indo-European language groups: the Romance languages, derived from the Latin of the Roman Empire; the Germanic languages, whose ancestor language came from southern Scandinavia; and the Slavic languages. [275], Christianity, including the Roman Catholic Church,[276][277] has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilisation since at least the 4th century,[278][279][280][281] and for at least a millennium and a half, Europe has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture, even though the religion was inherited from the Middle East. [62][63][64] In the course of the 5th century BC, several of the Greek city states would ultimately check the Achaemenid Persian advance in Europe through the Greco-Persian Wars, considered a pivotal moment in world history,[65] as the 50 years of peace that followed are known as Golden Age of Athens, the seminal period of ancient Greece that laid many of the foundations of Western civilisation. The Treaty of Rome in 1957 established the European Economic Community between six Western European states with the goal of a unified economic policy and common market. Turkic languages include Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Turkish, in addition to smaller languages in Eastern and Southeast Europe (Balkan Gagauz Turkish, Bashkir, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Karachay-Balkar, Kumyk, Nogai, and Tatar). Economies were disrupted by World War I but by the beginning of World War II they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic strength of the United States. Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour (modern-day Istanbul) in 330 CE. Until 1990, the European Community was expanded from 6 founding members to 12. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene. Society for Nautical Research., 1990. World War I and especially World War II diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs. EU-Länder, in denen der Euro nicht verwendet wird. ", The Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online, Sovereign states and dependent territories, Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), Customs Union of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Russia (CUBKR), Sovereign states and dependencies of Europe, autonomous country of the Kingdom of Denmark, List of countries where Arabic is an official language, Lower Gangetic Plains moist deciduous forests, Northwestern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows, Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt pine–oak forests, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Europe&oldid=1017068576, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Articles with dead external links from August 2016, Articles with dead external links from December 2016, Articles with permanently dead external links, Articles lacking reliable references from April 2016, Wikipedia pages semi-protected against vandalism, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2018, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2020, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Articles with disputed statements from October 2016, Wikipedia articles needing clarification from October 2016, Articles containing Belarusian-language text, Articles containing Bosnian-language text, Articles containing Bulgarian-language text, Articles containing Macedonian-language text, Articles containing Russian-language text, Articles containing Serbian-language text, Articles containing Ukrainian-language text, Articles lacking reliable references from January 2020, Pages using Sister project links with hidden wikidata, Pages using Sister project links with default search, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz area identifiers, Wikipedia articles with TDVİA identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 10 April 2021, at 16:27. [23], Clickable map of Europe, showing one of the most commonly used continental boundaries[24] Key: blue: states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia; The land connection between the two persisted for a considerable time, via Greenland, leading to interchange of animal species. The list below includes all entities[clarification needed] falling even partially under any of the various common definitions of Europe,[clarification needed] geographic or political. [11] Although much of this border is over land, Europe is generally accorded the status of a full continent because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. The yearly average temperature in city of Inverness is 9.05 °C (48.29 °F). The Church in fact built Western civilization. These two halves are separated by the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and Alps/Carpathians. 19 EU countries share the euro as a common currency. [254] This helped them to enjoy rapidly improving economies, while those states in COMECON were struggling in a large part due to the cost of the Cold War. One view is that her name derives from the ancient Greek elements εὐρύς (eurús), "wide, broad" and ὤψ (ōps, gen. ὠπός, ōpós) "eye, face, countenance", hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean "wide-gazing" or "broad of aspect". [56] The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans, who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE, ushering the European Iron Age. Meanwhile, the Serbian revolution (1804) and Greek War of Independence (1821) marked the beginning of the end of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, which ended with the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913. At the same time decolonisation, which had already started after World War I, gradually resulted in the independence of most of the European colonies in Asia and Africa. Euro crisis saves Germany money", "Eurozone crisis saves Germany tens of billions", "Double-dip recession: There's always fantasy island", "Germany Was Biggest Debt Transgressor of 20th Century", "The Danger Debt Poses to the Western World", "European economic forecast – autumn 2014", "Germany balances budget for first time since 1969", "Despite Progress, Euro Crisis Is Far From Over", "German 'hypocrisy' over Greek military spending has critics up in arms", "There's No Getting Around It, Germany Is Taking Over Europe", "German wages to rise but restraint still rules", "Germany launches strategy to counter ECB largesse", "European Economics: Welcome higher German wages", "Recommendation for a Council Recommendation on the implementation of the broad guidelines for the economic policies of the Member States whose currency is the euro", "Germany 'pivotal' to rebalancing eurozone", "US to chide Germany on eurozone growth at G7 meeting", "G7 reaffirms commitment not to depreciate currencies for domestic gain", "Italian showdown with Germany as Enrico Letta rejects 'death by austerity, "Incoherent EU economic policy won't deliver a swift recovery", "Why Germany Will Pay Up to Save the Euro", "Deficits: good marketing in a time of austerity? Since the Age of Discovery, started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. The 20th century saw the revival of Neopaganism through movements such as Wicca and Druidry. The semi-arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest. Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans. A narrow east–west tongue of Eurasian grassland (the steppe) extends westwards from Ukraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the 18th century, the traditional division of the landmass of Eurasia into two continents, Europe and Asia, followed Ptolemy, with the boundary following the Turkish Straits, the Black Sea, the Kerch Strait, the Sea of Azov and the Don (ancient Tanais). The geological history of Europe traces back to the formation of the Baltic Shield (Fennoscandia) and the Sarmatian craton, both around 2.25 billion years ago, followed by the Volgo–Uralia shield, the three together leading to the East European craton (≈ Baltica) which became a part of the supercontinent Columbia. Areas with little more than a unique tax status, such as Heligoland and the Canary Islands, are also not included for this reason. As a result, the Reconquista took the greater part of eight hundred years, in which period a long list of Alfonsos, Sanchos, Ordoños, Ramiros, Fernandos and Bermudos would be fighting their Christian rivals as much as the Muslim invaders. There are a particularly high number of self-described non-religious people in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Sweden, former East Germany, and France. [124][125] Exploration reached the Southern Hemisphere in the Atlantic and the Southern tip of Africa. Vertrag von Nizza. Vertrag von Lissabon. The annual budget deficit (expenses over revenues) was 3.4% GDP in 2014, much improved versus the 15% of 2009. The Mariner's mirror, Volumes 76–77. He drew a new line along the Volga, following the Volga north until the Samara Bend, along Obshchy Syrt (the drainage divide between Volga and Ural) and then north along Ural Mountains. [217] Languages in adjacent areas show significant overlaps (such as in English, for example). Europe has become a relatively secular continent, with an increasing number and proportion of irreligious, atheist and agnostic people, who make up about 18.2% of Europe's population,[285] currently the largest secular population in the Western world. [271], "Europe" as a cultural concept is substantially derived from the shared heritage of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire and its cultures. [103][104] After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century: Moldavia and Walachia. [85] The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church. 2003. The boundaries of Europe were historically understood as those of Christendom (or more specifically Latin Christendom), as established or defended throughout the medieval and early modern history of Europe, especially against Islam, as in the Reconquista and the Ottoman wars in Europe.[272]. Romance languages are spoken primarily in Western and Southern Europe, as well as in Switzerland in Central Europe and Romania and Moldova in Eastern Europe. West Germany recovered quickly and had doubled production from pre-war levels by the 1950s. [88] The Empire was weakened following the defeat at Manzikert and was weakened considerably by the sack of Constantinople in 1204, during the Fourth Crusade. Karlo Ruzicic-Kessler "Togliatti, Tito and the Shadow of Moscow 1944/45-1948: Post-War Territorial Disputes and the Communist World", In: Journal of European Integration History, (2/2014). [12][13] The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of Europe's ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages. [75] Between 711 and 720, most of the lands of the Visigothic Kingdom of Iberia was brought under Muslim rule — save for small areas in the northwest (Asturias) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. In Asia, European-derived populations, (specifically Russians), predominate in North Asia and some parts of Northern Kazakhstan.[267]. Geopolitical shifts, such as closer relations between Greece and Russia, as the crisis soured relations with Europe. There is huge disparity between many European countries in terms of their income. [191] The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people (mostly civilians) during the war, about half of all World War II casualties. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea complex and Barents Sea. [123] In the 15th century, Europe started to extend itself beyond its geographic frontiers. [213] The Gulf Stream is nicknamed "Europe's central heating", because it makes Europe's climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be. Rowse, A. L. (1969). The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages, followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500. The water of the Mediterranean extends from the Sahara desert to the Alpine arc in its northernmost part of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste. The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2–3% or less, in European Russia 5–10%. In May 1940, Germany attacked France through the Low Countries. harvnb error: no target: CITEREFLaiouMorisson2007 (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFPounds1979 (. [30] The Book of Jubilees described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating it from Northwest Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia.[31]. .eu, . Expanding from their base in central Italy beginning in the third century BCE, the Romans gradually expanded to eventually rule the entire Mediterranean Basin and Western Europe by the turn of the millennium. This accounted for almost 85% of Europe's total population growth. The question was still treated as a "controversy" in geographical literature of the 1860s, with Douglas Freshfield advocating the Caucasus crest boundary as the "best possible", citing support from various "modern geographers".[41]. By the mid-19th century, there were three main conventions, one following the Don, the Volga–Don Canal and the Volga, the other following the Kuma–Manych Depression to the Caspian and then the Ural River, and the third abandoning the Don altogether, following the Greater Caucasus watershed to the Caspian. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire. In 1999, 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined the Eurozone replacing their former national currencies by the common euro. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union (EU), a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation. Helped by the economic crisis, social instability and the threat of communism, fascist movements developed throughout Europe placing Adolf Hitler in power of what became Nazi Germany.[180][181]. Germanic languages are spoken in Western, Northern and Central Europe as well as in Gibraltar and Malta in Southern Europe. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe respectively. [49] The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. The public debt to GDP ratio in 2014 was 177% of GDP or €317 billion. Other religions, including Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism are minority religions (though Tibetan Buddhism is the majority religion of Russia's Republic of Kalmykia). [133] The plunder of the empires of the Americas allowed Spain to finance religious persecution in Europe for over a century. The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. [273][circular reference], Religion in Europe according to the Global Religious Landscape survey by the Pew Forum, 2012[8], The largest religion in Europe is Christianity, with 76.2% of Europeans considering themselves Christians,[274] including Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and various Protestant denominations. [102] The invaders, who became known as Tatars, were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. [118][119][120] Patrons in Italy, including the Medici family of Florentine bankers and the Popes in Rome, funded prolific quattrocento and cinquecento artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. This description is simplified. Det innebär att EU-kommissionen, den EU-institution som kontrollerar att EU-länder följer EU:s lagstiftning, kan starta en dialog med ett medlemsland som riskerar att bryta mot EU:s grundläggande principer. Other Indo-European languages outside the three main groups include the Baltic group (Latvian and Lithuanian), the Celtic group (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton[217]), Greek, Armenian, and Albanian. [167] Over 60 million European soldiers were mobilised from 1914 to 1918. The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. The Gulf Stream not only carries warm water to Europe's coast but also warms up the prevailing westerly winds that blow across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean. [144][145][146] Discontent with the aristocracy and clergy's monopoly on political power in France resulted in the French Revolution and the establishment of the First Republic as a result of which the monarchy and many of the nobility perished during the initial reign of terror. [67][68] Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution. The UN predicts a steady population decline in Central and Eastern Europe as a result of emigration and low birth rates. Public debt peaked at €356 billion in 2011; it was reduced by a bailout program to €305 billion in 2012 and then rose slightly. These water divides extend with a few relatively small interruptions (compared to the aforementioned mountain ranges) from the Turkish straits running into the Mediterranean Sea to the upper part of the Ob River that drains into the Arctic Ocean. Stalin was also responsible for the Great Purge of 1937–38 in which the NKVD executed 681,692 people;[173] millions of people were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. Tudor Cornwall: portrait of a society. As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BC by Anaximander and Hecataeus. [230] As with other continents, Europe has a large variation of wealth among its countries. [216] [258] In 2005, the EU had an overall net gain from immigration of 1.8 million people. [16][17][18] Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. Euro) an Hilfsdarlehen gewährt. [29] Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don. The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally, politically and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation. Europe lies mainly in the temperate climate zones, being subjected to prevailing westerlies. Spinei, Victor. Some of these (Alps, Pyrenees) are oriented east–west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the ocean in the interior. In: The map shows one of the most commonly accepted delineations of the geographical boundaries of Europe, as used by. [233] Monaco is the richest country in terms of GDP per capita in the world according to the World Bank report. [66] The empire continued to expand under emperors such as Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, who spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic, Pictish and Scottish tribes. It Has No Right to Lecture Greece, "Germany and the crisis of the periphery", "Germany has profited 100billion euros by the Greek economic crisis", "Time for Flush Germany to Put Europe First", "The EU's Dirty Secret: Germany Is The Biggest Welfare Recipient There Is", "The Euro Payoff: Germany's Economic Advantages from a Large and Diverse Euro Area", "Germany Profiteering from Euro Crisis Through Low Interest Rates", "Analysis: What taxpayer bailouts? Berlin finally fell in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. Later that year, following the Munich Agreement signed by Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy, Germany annexed the Sudetenland, which was a part of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans, and in early 1939, the remainder of Czechoslovakia was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, controlled by Germany, and the Slovak Republic. [239] Italy was also in a poor economic condition but regained a high level of growth by the 1950s. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most commonly used among Europeans; and the EU's Schengen Area abolishes border and immigration controls between most of its member states and some non-members states. [270] While Istanbul has the highest total city population, it lies partly in Asia, making Moscow the largest city entirely in Europe. Josef Wasmayer "Wetter- und Meereskunde der Adria" (1976), pp 5. Feudalism developed in France in the Early Middle Ages and soon spread throughout Europe. Significant financial losses for Eurozone countries and the IMF, which are owed the majority of Greece's roughly €300 billion national debt. The four largest urban areas of Europe are Istanbul, Moscow, Paris and London. [105] From the 12th to the 15th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Moscow grew from a small principality under Mongol rule to the largest state in Europe, overthrowing the Mongols in 1480 and eventually becoming the Tsardom of Russia. ... EU-Länder, in denen der Euro verwendet wird. The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Kennedy, Hugh (1995). [134] The Thirty Years War (1618–1648) crippled the Holy Roman Empire and devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40 percent of its population. In the remote regions of north-western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt. 27 European states are members of the politico-economic European Union, 26 of the border-free Schengen Area and 19 of the monetary union Eurozone.