The Treaty of Maastricht is signed on February 7, 1992, formally establishing the European Union, effective on November 1, 1993 with the EEC becoming the European Community (EC) "first pillar" of the newly formed EU, which encompassed the EC alongside other areas like foreign policy and justice.
In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty merged the EC into the EU, creating a unified legal framework and giving the EU a single legal personality as the EC formally ceased to exist. The six founding nations of the EU's predecessors, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), were Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. These nations signed treaties in the 1950s to create the ECSC (1951) and the EEC (1957) with the goal of fostering peace and economic integration, laying the groundwork for the modern European Union. More
