Brexit Gold Silver Coin Rule Britannia EU Europe Britain Exit Signed Union Jack

$17.14 Buy It Now or Best Offer, $10.28 Shipping, 30-Day Returns, eBay Money Back Guarantee
Seller: Top-Rated Seller lasvegasormonaco ✉️ (3,239) 99.7%, Location: Manchester, Take a look at my other items, GB, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 266741911771 Brexit Gold Silver Coin Rule Britannia EU Europe Britain Exit Signed Union Jack. Brexit Commemorative Coin with Boris Johnson Autograph Card This is a Silver & Gold Plated coin to commemorate Brexit when Britain left the European Union Front has a map of the UK with the Union Jack Flag and Europe with the EU Flag with the words "Brexit UK EU Referendum 23 June 2016" The back has an image of Britannia  with both the Union Jack and the EU Flag Also included is a Photo card of Boris Signing the Withdrawal agreement plus the back has a agreement with Bo Jos signature The coin is 40mm in diameter, weighs about  1 oz The card is the size of a standard business card 55mm x 85mm Comes in air-tight acrylic coin holder. A Beautiful coin and Magnificent Keepsake Souvenir to Mark the Exit of the United Kingdom from the EU.  A Very Special Day in the UKs History In Excellent Condition Sorry about the poor quality photos. They dont do the coin justice which looks a lot better in real life Click Here to Check out my other British Items!

Bid with Confidence please read my 100% Positive feedback from over 2,000 satisfied customer

Read how quickly they receive their items -  I post all my items within 24 hours of receiving payment I am a UK Based Seller with over 10 years of eBay Selling Experience I am Highly Rated Seller by Ebay and  My selling Performance is Rated  Premium Service

International customers are welcome.  I have shipped items to over 120 countries and I will ship anywhere worldwide UK Buyers can expect their items in a few days sometimes they arrive the next day Items sent to Europe usually take about a week and outside Europe take around 2 weeks International orders may require longer handling time if held up at customs. A small percentage do get held up at customs if they do they can take up to 6 weeks to arrive Returns Accepted Why not treat yourself? I always combine multiple items and send an invoice with discounted postage I leave instant feedback upon receiving yours All payment methods accepted from all countries in all currencies Are you looking for a Interesting conversation piece?  A birthday present for the person who has everything? A comical gift to cheer someone up? or a special unique gift just to say thank you? You now know where to look for a bargain! All Items Dispatched within 24 hours of Receiving Payment. 

Thanks for Looking and Good Luck with the Bidding!! 

I have sold items to coutries such as Afghanistan * Albania * Algeria * American Samoa (US) * Andorra * Angola * Anguilla (GB) * Antigua and Barbuda * Argentina * Armenia * Aruba (NL) * Australia * Austria * Azerbaijan * Bahamas * Bahrain * Bangladesh * Barbados * Belarus * Belgium * Belize * Benin * Bermuda (GB) * Bhutan * Bolivia * Bonaire (NL)  * Bosnia and Herzegovina * Botswana * Bouvet Island (NO) * Brazil * British Indian Ocean Territory (GB) * British Virgin Islands (GB) * Brunei * Bulgaria * Burkina Faso * Burundi * Cambodia * Cameroon * Canada * Cape Verde * Cayman Islands (GB) * Central African Republic * Chad * Chile * China * Christmas Island (AU) * Cocos Islands (AU) * Colombia * Comoros * Congo * Democratic Republic of the Congo * Cook Islands (NZ) * Coral Sea Islands Territory (AU) * Costa Rica * Croatia * Cuba * Curaçao (NL)  * Cyprus * Czech Republic * Denmark * Djibouti * Dominica * Dominican Republic * East Timor * Ecuador * Egypt * El Salvador * Equatorial Guinea * Eritrea * Estonia * Ethiopia * Falkland Islands (GB) * Faroe Islands (DK) * Fiji Islands * Finland * France * French Guiana (FR) * French Polynesia (FR) * French Southern Lands (FR) * Gabon * Gambia * Georgia * Germany * Ghana * Gibraltar (GB) * Greece * Greenland (DK) * Grenada * Guadeloupe (FR) * Guam (US) * Guatemala * Guernsey (GB) * Guinea * Guinea-Bissau * Guyana * Haiti * Heard and McDonald Islands (AU) * Honduras * Hong Kong (CN) * Hungary * Iceland * India * Indonesia * Iran * Iraq * Ireland * Isle of Man (GB) * Israel * Italy * Ivory Coast * Jamaica * Jan Mayen (NO) * Japan * Jersey (GB) * Jordan * Kazakhstan * Kenya * Kiribati * Kosovo * Kuwait * Kyrgyzstan * Laos * Latvia * Lebanon * Lesotho * Liberia * Libya * Liechtenstein * Lithuania * Luxembourg * Macau (CN) * Macedonia * Madagascar * Malawi * Malaysia * Maldives * Mali * Malta * Marshall Islands * Martinique (FR) * Mauritania * Mauritius * Mayotte (FR) * Mexico * Micronesia * Moldova * Monaco * Mongolia * Montenegro * Montserrat (GB) * Morocco * Mozambique * Myanmar * Namibia * Nauru * Navassa (US) * Nepal * Netherlands * New Caledonia (FR) * New Zealand * Nicaragua * Niger * Nigeria * Niue (NZ) * Norfolk Island (AU) * North Korea * Northern Cyprus * Northern Mariana Islands (US) * Norway * Oman * Pakistan * Palau * Palestinian Authority * Panama * Papua New Guinea * Paraguay * Peru * Philippines * Pitcairn Island (GB) * Poland * Portugal * Puerto Rico (US) * Qatar * Reunion (FR) * Romania * Russia * Rwanda * Saba (NL)  * Saint Barthelemy (FR) * Saint Helena (GB) * Saint Kitts and Nevis * Saint Lucia * Saint Martin (FR) * Saint Pierre and Miquelon (FR) * Saint Vincent and the Grenadines * Samoa * San Marino * Sao Tome and Principe * Saudi Arabia * Senegal * Serbia * Seychelles * Sierra Leone * Singapore * Sint Eustatius (NL)  * Sint Maarten (NL)  * Slovakia * Slovenia * Solomon Islands * Somalia * South Africa * South Georgia (GB) * South Korea * South Sudan * Spain * Sri Lanka * Sudan * Suriname * Svalbard (NO) * Swaziland * Sweden * Switzerland * Syria * Taiwan * Tajikistan * Tanzania * Thailand * Togo * Tokelau (NZ) * Tonga * Trinidad and Tobago * Tunisia * Turkey * Turkmenistan * Turks and Caicos Islands (GB) * Tuvalu * U.S. Minor Pacific Islands (US) * U.S. Virgin Islands (US) * Uganda * Ukraine * United Arab Emirates * United Kingdom * United States * Uruguay * Uzbekistan * Vanuatu * Vatican City * Venezuela * Vietnam * Wallis and Futuna (FR) * Yemen * Zambia * Zimbabwe and major cities such as Tokyo, Yokohama, New York City, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Mexico City, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Manila, Mumbai, Delhi, Jakarta, Lagos, Kolkata, Cairo, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Shanghai, Karachi, Paris, Istanbul, Nagoya, Beijing, Chicago, London, Shenzhen, Essen, Düsseldorf, Tehran, Bogota, Lima, Bangkok, Johannesburg, East Rand, Chennai, Taipei, Baghdad, Santiago, Bangalore, Hyderabad, St Petersburg, Philadelphia, Lahore, Kinshasa, Miami, Ho Chi Minh City, Madrid, Tianjin, Kuala Lumpur, Toronto, Milan, Shenyang, Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston, Belo Horizonte, Khartoum, Riyadh, Singapore, Washington, Detroit, Barcelona,, Houston, Athens, Berlin, Sydney, Atlanta, Guadalajara, San Francisco, Oakland, Montreal, Monterey, Melbourne, Ankara, Recife, Phoenix/Mesa, Durban, Porto Alegre, Dalian, Jeddah, Seattle, Cape Town, San Diego, Fortaleza, Curitiba, Rome, Naples, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Tel Aviv, Birmingham, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Manchester, San Juan, Katowice, Tashkent, Fukuoka, Baku, Sumqayit, St. Louis, Baltimore, Sapporo, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Taichung, Warsaw, Denver, Cologne, Bonn, Hamburg, Dubai, Pretoria, Vancouver, Beirut, Budapest, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Campinas, Harare, Brasilia, Kuwait, Munich, Portland, Brussels, Vienna, San Jose, Damman , Copenhagen, Brisbane, Riverside, San Bernardino, Cincinnati and Accra

Brexit

Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union

Glossary of terms

Background

    European Communities Act

    1975 EC membership referendum

    UK rebate

    Bruges speech

    No. No. No.

    Maastricht Rebels

    Black Wednesday

    European Union (Amendment) Act 2008

    European Union Act 2011

    UK opt-outs from EU legislation

    Euroscepticism in the UK

        UK opinion polling on EU membership

    Campaigns for a referendum

        People's Pledge

        Labour for a Referendum

    Bloomberg speech

    In or Out

    2013–14 EU (Referendum) Bill (unsuccessful)

    2014 European Parliament election

    2014 UK Parliament by-elections

        Clacton

        Heywood and Middleton

        Rochester and Strood

    2015 UK general election

    2015–16 EU membership renegotiation

2016 EU referendum

    EU Referendum Act (Gibraltar)

    EU Referendum (Date of Referendum etc.) Regulations

    EU Referendum (Conduct) Regulations

    Issues

    Endorsements

    Opinion polling

    UK Government pro-EU leaflet

Campaigns

Leave campaigns

    Vote Leave (official)

        Business for Britain

        Conservatives for Britain

        BeLeave

    Leave.EU

        Bpoplive

    The Freedom Association

        Better Off Out

    Grassroots Out

    Labour Leave

    Get Britain Out

    Bruges Group

    Campaign for an Independent Britain

    Brexit: The Movie

Remain campaigns

    Britain Stronger in Europe (official)

    Labour In for Britain

    European Movement UK

    Britain in Europe

    British Influence

    Business for New Europe

    Nucleus

    Project Fear

Outcome

    Results

    Causes for result

    International reactions

    Immediate aftermath

        2016 Conservative Party election

        2016 Labour Party election

        2016 UKIP election

        Department for Exiting the EU

        Department for International Trade

    Allegations of unlawful campaigning

    Alleged Russian interference

Notice of withdrawal

    Article 50 process

    Miller case (Article 50)

    EU (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017

    Brexit plan

    Repeal Bill plan

    2017 UK general election

Negotiations

    Negotiation positions

        EU negotiation mandate

        Chequers agreement

    Timeline: 2017, 2018, 2019

    2019 European Parliament election

    2019 UK general election

Withdrawal agreement

    Brexit divorce bill

    Fish for finance

    Irish backstop

    No-deal Brexit

    Northern Ireland Protocol

        Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

    Windsor Framework

Legislation

    Withdrawal Act 2018 (Gibraltar)

    Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018

    Cooper–Letwin Act

    Benn Act

    2019 suspension of rebel Conservative MPs

    Public Vote Bill (not passed)

    Terms of Withdrawal Bills (not passed)

    Scottish EU Continuity Bill (blocked)

    Withdrawal Agreement Act (Gibraltar)

    Scottish EU Continuity Act

    Internal Market Act

    EU (Future Relationship) Act

    Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Impact

    Impact on the Irish border

        Good Friday Agreement

    Impact on the EU

    Economic effects

    Effects on Gibraltar

    Scientific cooperation

    Retained EU law

    2021 Jersey dispute

EU–UK relations

    Relations pre- and post-Brexit

    EU–UK trade negotiation

    EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA)

    Partnership Council

    Partnership Assembly

Relations with EU member states

    Austria

    Belgium

    Bulgaria

    Croatia

    Cyprus

        Akrotiri and Dhekelia

    Czech Republic

    Denmark

    Estonia

    France

    Germany

    Greece

    Hungary

    Ireland

        Ireland–UK border

        British–Irish Council

        North/South Ministerial Council

    Italy

    Lithuania

    Malta

    Netherlands

    Poland

    Portugal

    Romania

    Slovakia

    Spain

        Status of Gibraltar

        Gibraltar–Spain border

    Sweden

    Conjectured EEA membership

Opposition

    Post-referendum opinion polling

    New initiatives

        Change Britain

        More United

        Open Britain

        The New European

        Unite to Remain

    Led By Donkeys

        Revoke Article 50 petition

    Postcards from the 48%

    Proposed second Scottish independence referendum

Calls for a second referendum

    People's Vote

        Britain for Europe

        European Movement UK

        For our Future's Sake

        Healthier IN the EU

        InFacts

        Open Britain

        Our Future Our Choice

        Scientists for EU

    Other organisations

        Best for Britain

        Bollocks to Brexit

        Change UK

        Liberal Democrats

        Right to Vote

Timeline

Bloomberg speech Jan 2013

Referendum Bill blocked Jan 2014

European Parliament election May 2014

2015 general election May 2015

Renegotiation begins Jun 2015

Referendum Act passed Dec 2015

Renegotiation concluded Feb 2016

Referendum held Jun 2016

David Cameron resigns as PM Jul 2016

Theresa May becomes PM Jul 2016

Article 50 judgement Jan 2017

Brexit plan presented Feb 2017

Notification Act passed Mar 2017

Article 50 invoked Mar 2017

Repeal Bill plan presented Mar 2017

2017 general election Jun 2017

Brexit negotiations begin Jun 2017

Withdrawal Act passed Jun 2018

Chequers plan presented Jul 2018

Withdrawal agreement plan presented July 2018

Withdrawal agreement released Nov 2018

Scottish Continuity Bill blocked Dec 2018

Meaningful votes Jan–Mar 2019

Brexit delayed until 12 April Mar 2019

Cooper–Letwin Act passed Apr 2019

Brexit delayed until 31 October Apr 2019

European Parliament election May 2019

Theresa May resigns as PM Jul 2019

Boris Johnson becomes PM Jul 2019

Prorogation and annulment Aug–Sep 2019

Benn Act passed Sep 2019

Withdrawal agreement revised Oct 2019

Brexit delayed until 31 January Oct 2019

2019 general election Dec 2019

Agreement Act passed Jan 2020

UK leaves the European Union Jan 2020

Implementation period begins Jan 2020

UK–EU trade deal agreed Dec 2020

Future Relationship Act passed Dec 2020

Scottish Continuity Act passed Dec 2020

Implementation period ends Dec 2020

New EU–UK relationship begins Jan 2021

UK–EU trade deal ratified Apr 2021

Windsor Framework released Feb 2023

Windsor framework adopted Mar 2023

    flag EU portal flag UK portal

    vte

Part of a series of articles on

UK membership

of the European Union

(1973–2020)

Accession

    Treaty of Accession 1972

    1972 EC Act

    1973 enlargement of the EC

1975 referendum

    Referendum Act (results)

Treaty amendments

Single European Act, 1986 (UK ratification)

Maastricht Treaty, 1992 (UK ratification)

Treaty of Amsterdam, 1997 (UK ratification)

Treaty of Nice, 2001 (UK ratification)

Treaty of Lisbon, 2007 (UK ratification)

Related:

    2011 UK Act on new EU Treaty amendments

    EU-related British Acts

    Proposed European Constitution referendum

        European Union Bill 2004–2005

MEPs for UK constituencies

Members 1973–1979 (elected by parliament)

Members 1979–1984 (1979 election)

Members 1984–1989 (1984 election)

Members 1989–1994 (1989 election)

Members 1994–1999 (1994 election)

Members 1999–2004 (1999 election)

Members 2004–2009 (2004 election)

Members 2009–2014 (2009 election)

Members 2014–2019 (2014 election)

Members 2019–2020 (2019 election)

Women

Officials and bodies

    House of Lords EU Committee

    House of Commons EU Committee

    Permanent EU Representatives for UK

    Northern Ireland Executive in Brussels

    EU Representative in London

    UK European Commissioners

    Department for Exiting the European Union

Issues and events

    Economy

        The Euro

        Black Wednesday

        UK budget rebate

    Nationality law

    Euroscepticism in the UK

        United Kingdom opt-outs from EU legislation

        Maastricht Rebels

Withdrawal

    2015 UK general election

    2015–2016 membership renegotiation

    2016 EU membership referendum

        Vote Leave

        Britain Stronger in Europe

    Notification of withdrawal

    2017 UK general election

    Brexit negotiations

    Impact of Brexit

    Future relationship

        Withdrawal agreement

        No-deal Brexit

        Impact on Irish border

        Northern Ireland Protocol

    Parliamentary votes

    Proposed second referendum

    2019 UK general election

    flag EU portal flag UK portal

    vte

The United Kingdom in orange; the European Union (27 member states) in blue: a representation of the result of Brexit

Brexit (/ˈbrɛksɪt, ˈbrɛɡzɪt/;[1] portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU). Following a referendum on 23 June 2016, Brexit officially took place at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).[a] The UK is the only sovereign country to have left the EU. The UK had been a member state of the EU or its predecessor, the European Communities (EC), since 1 January 1973. Following Brexit, EU law and the Court of Justice of the European Union no longer have primacy over British laws. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 retains relevant EU law as domestic law, which the UK can amend or repeal.

The EU and its institutions developed gradually after their establishment. Throughout the period of British membership, Eurosceptic groups had existed, opposing aspects of the EU and its predecessors. Labour prime minister Harold Wilson's pro-EC government held a referendum on continued EC membership in 1975, in which 67.2 per cent of those voting chose to stay within the bloc. Despite growing political opposition to further European integration aimed at "ever closer union" between 1975 and 2016, notably from Margaret Thatcher in the late 1980s and 1990s, and factions of the Conservative Party in the 2000s, no further referendums on the issue were held.

By the 2010s, the growing popularity of UK Independence Party (UKIP), as well as pressure from Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party, persuaded then-Prime Minister David Cameron to promise a referendum on British membership of the EU if his government was re-elected. Following the general election in 2015, which produced a small but unexpected overall majority for the governing Conservative Party, the promised referendum on continued EU membership was held on 23 June 2016. Notable supporters of the Remain campaign included Cameron, future Prime Ministers Theresa May and Liz Truss, and former Prime Ministers John Major, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown; while notable supporters of the Leave campaign included future Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. The electorate voted to leave the EU with a 51.9% share of the vote, with all regions of England and Wales except London voting in favour of Brexit, and Scotland and Northern Ireland voting against. The result led to Cameron's sudden resignation, his replacement by then-Home Secretary Theresa May, and four years of negotiations with the EU on the terms of departure and on future relations, completed under a Boris Johnson government, with government control remaining with the Conservative Party during this period.

The negotiation process was both politically challenging and deeply divisive within the UK, leading to two snap elections in 2017 and 2019. One deal was overwhelmingly rejected by the UK Parliament, causing great uncertainty and leading to postponement of the withdrawal date to avoid a no-deal Brexit. The UK left the EU on 31 January 2020 after a withdrawal deal was passed by Parliament but continued to participate in many EU institutions (including the single market and customs union) during an eleven-month transition period in order to ensure frictionless trade until all details of the post-Brexit relationship were agreed and implemented. Trade deal negotiations continued within days of the scheduled end of the transition period and the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement was signed on 30 December 2020. The effects of Brexit are in part determined by the cooperation agreement, which provisionally applied from 1 January 2021, until it formally came into force on 1 May 2021.[2]

Timeline

Main article: Timeline of Brexit

Following a UK-wide referendum on 23 June 2016, in which 51.89 per cent voted in favour of leaving the EU and 48.11 per cent voted to remain a member, Prime Minister David Cameron resigned. On 29 March 2017, the new British government led by Theresa May formally notified the EU of the country's intention to withdraw, beginning the process of Brexit negotiations. The withdrawal, originally scheduled for 29 March 2019, was delayed by the deadlock in the British parliament after the June 2017 general election, which resulted in a hung parliament in which the Conservatives lost their majority but remained the largest party. This deadlock led to three extensions of the UK's Article 50 process.

The deadlock was resolved after a subsequent general election was held in December 2019. In that election, Conservatives who campaigned in support of a "revised" withdrawal agreement led by Boris Johnson won an overall majority of 80 seats. After the December 2019 election, the British parliament finally ratified the withdrawal agreement with the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020. The UK left the EU at the end of 31 January 2020 CET (11 p.m. GMT). This began a transition period that ended on 31 December 2020 CET (11 p.m. GMT), during which the UK and EU negotiated their future relationship.[3] During the transition, the UK remained subject to EU law and remained part of the European Union Customs Union and the European single market. However, it was no longer part of the EU's political bodies or institutions.[4][5]

The withdrawal had been advocated by hard Eurosceptics and opposed by pro-Europeanists and soft Eurosceptics, with both sides of the argument spanning the political spectrum. In 1973, the UK joined the European Communities (EC) – principally the European Economic Community (EEC) – and its continued membership was endorsed in the 1975 membership referendum. In the 1970s and 1980s, withdrawal from the EC was advocated mainly by the political left, e.g. in the Labour Party's 1983 election manifesto. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which founded the EU, was ratified by the British parliament in 1993 but was not put to a referendum. The Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party led a rebellion over the ratification of the treaty and, with the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the cross-party People's Pledge campaign, then led a collective campaign, particularly after the Treaty of Lisbon was also ratified by the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008 without being put to a referendum following a previous promise to hold a referendum on ratifying the abandoned European Constitution, which was never held. After promising to hold a second membership referendum if his government was elected, Conservative prime minister David Cameron held this referendum in 2016. Cameron, who had campaigned to remain, resigned after the result and was succeeded by Theresa May.

On 29 March 2017, the British government formally began the withdrawal process by invoking Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union with permission from Parliament. May called a snap general election in June 2017, which resulted in a Conservative minority government supported by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). UK–EU withdrawal negotiations began later that month. The UK negotiated to leave the EU customs union and single market. This resulted in the November 2018 withdrawal agreement, but the British parliament voted against ratifying it three times. The Labour Party wanted any agreement to maintain a customs union, while many Conservatives opposed the agreement's financial settlement, as well as the "Irish backstop" designed to prevent border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party (SNP), and others sought to reverse Brexit through a proposed second referendum.

On 14 March 2019, the British parliament voted for May to ask the EU to delay Brexit until June, and then later October.[6] Having failed to get her agreement approved, May resigned as Prime Minister in July and was succeeded by Boris Johnson. He sought to replace parts of the agreement and vowed to leave the EU by the new deadline. On 17 October 2019, the British government and the EU agreed on a revised withdrawal agreement, with new arrangements for Northern Ireland.[7][8] Parliament approved the agreement for further scrutiny, but rejected passing it into law before the 31 October deadline, and forced the government (through the "Benn Act") to ask for a third Brexit delay. An early general election was then held on 12 December. The Conservatives won a large majority in that election, with Johnson declaring that the UK would leave the EU in early 2020.[9] The withdrawal agreement was ratified by the UK on 23 January and by the EU on 30 January; it came into force on 31 January 2020.[10][11][12]

Terminology and etymology

Main article: Glossary of Brexit terms

Following the referendum of 23 June 2016, many new pieces of Brexit-related jargon entered popular use.[13][14] The word Brexit is a portmanteau of the phrase "British exit".[15] According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term was coined in a blog post on the website Euractiv by Peter Wilding, director of European policy at BSkyB, on 15 May 2012.[16] Wilding coined Brexit to refer to the end of UK membership in the EU – by 2016, usage of the word had increased by 3,400% in one year.[17] On 2 November 2016, the Collins English Dictionary selected Brexit as the word of the year for 2016.[18]

Background: the United Kingdom and EC/EU membership

Main articles: Accession of the United Kingdom to the European Communities and United Kingdom membership of the European Union

The Inner Six (blue) and Outer Seven (green) of European integration from 1961 until 1973:

  EC Members (Inner Six)

  EFTA Members (Outer Seven)

When the UK first joined the European Communities (along with Denmark and Ireland) on 1 January 1973 it was one of just nine member states that made up the bloc at the time.

  EC Members

The "Inner Six" European countries signed the Treaty of Paris in 1951, establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The 1955 Messina Conference deemed that the ECSC was a success, and resolved to extend the concept further, thereby leading to the 1957 Treaties of Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). In 1967, these became known as the European Communities (EC). The UK attempted to join in 1963 and 1967, but these applications were vetoed by the President of France, Charles de Gaulle, who feared the UK would be a Trojan horse for US influence.[19][20]

Some time after de Gaulle resigned in 1969, the UK successfully applied for European Communities (EC) membership. Membership of the then EEC was thoroughly discussed at the long debate in the House of Commons in October 1971. It led to the decisive vote in favour of membership by 356 to 244. As historian Piers Ludlow observed, the 1971 parliamentary debate was of high quality and considered all issues. The British were not "misled and persuaded to accept membership in a narrow commercial entity without being aware that the EEC was a political project liable to develop in the future".[21] The Conservative prime minister Edward Heath signed the Treaty of Accession in 1972.[22] Parliament passed the European Communities Act later that year[23] and the UK joined Denmark and the Republic of Ireland in becoming a member on 1 January 1973, without referendum.[24]

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Labour Party was the more Eurosceptic of the two major parties, and the Conservatives the more Europhile. Labour won the February 1974 general election without a majority and then contested the subsequent October 1974 general election with a commitment to renegotiate Britain's terms of membership of the EC, believing them to be unfavourable, and then hold a referendum on whether to remain in the EC on the new terms.[25] Labour again won the election (this time with a small majority), and in 1975 the UK held its first ever national referendum, asking whether the UK should remain in the EC. Despite significant division within the ruling Labour Party,[26] all major political parties and the mainstream press supported continuing membership of the EC. On 5 June 1975, 67.2% of the electorate and all but two[27] British counties and regions voted to stay in;[28] support for the UK to leave the EC in 1975 appears unrelated to the support for Leave in the 2016 referendum.[29]

In 1979, the UK secured its first opt-out, although the expression was not contemporary; it was the only EEC country not to take part in the European Monetary System.

The Labour Party campaigned in the 1983 general election on a commitment to withdraw from the EC without a referendum.[30] Following their heavy defeat in that election, Labour changed its policy.[30] In 1985, the second Margaret Thatcher government ratified the Single European Act—the first major revision to the Treaty of Rome—without a referendum.[31]

Comparison of results of 1975 and 2016 referendums

In October 1990, under pressure from senior ministers and despite Thatcher's deep reservations, the UK joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), with the pound sterling pegged to the deutschmark. Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister the following month, amid Conservative Party divisions arising partly from her increasingly Eurosceptic views. The UK was forced to withdraw from the ERM on Black Wednesday in September 1992, after the pound sterling came under pressure from currency speculation.[32] Italy left the same month, but would soon rejoin on a different band. The UK did not seek re-entry and remained outside the ERM.

On 1 November 1993, after the UK and the other eleven member states had ratified, the EC became the EU under the Maastricht Treaty[33] compromise between member states seeking deeper integration and those wishing to retain greater national control in the economic and political union.[34] Denmark, France, and the Republic of Ireland held referendums to ratify the Maastricht Treaty. In accordance with Constitution of the United Kingdom, specifically that of parliamentary sovereignty, ratification in the UK was not subject to approval by referendum. Despite this, British constitutional historian Vernon Bogdanor wrote that there was "a clear constitutional rationale for requiring a referendum" because although MPs are entrusted with legislative power by the electorate, they are not given authority to transfer that power (the UK's previous three referendums all concerned this). Further, as the ratification of the treaty was in the manifestos of the three major political parties, voters opposed to ratification had limited options for expressing this. For Bogdanor, while the ratification by the House of Commons might be legal, it would not be legitimate—which requires popular consent. The way in which the treaty was ratified, he judged, was "likely to have fundamental consequences both for British politics and for Britain's relationship with the [EC]."[35][36]

Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom

Main article: Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom

Margaret Thatcher

Nigel Farage

David Cameron

Conservative prime ministers Margaret Thatcher (left) and David Cameron (right) used Eurosceptic rhetoric while supporting the UK's membership and development of the European single market. Euroscepticism – and in particular the impact of the UK Independence Party (former leader Nigel Farage pictured centre) on the Conservatives' election results – contributed to Cameron's 2015–16 attempt to renegotiate the UK's EU membership, and ultimately the holding of the 2016 referendum.

Thatcher, who had previously supported the common market and the Single European Act, in the Bruges speech of 1988 warned against "a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". She influenced Daniel Hannan, who in 1990 founded the Oxford Campaign for Independent Britain; "With hindsight, some see this as the start of the campaign for Brexit", the Financial Times later wrote.[37] The vote to approve the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 triggered a strong Eurosceptic response, splitting the Conservative Party and leading to many past supporters forming alternative Eurosceptic parties. This included Sir James Goldsmith forming the Referendum Party in 1994 to contest the 1997 general election on a platform of providing a referendum on the nature of the UK's relationship with the rest of the EU.[38][39] The party fielded candidates in 547 constituencies at that election, and won 810,860 votes—2.6% of the total votes cast[40]—but failed to win a parliamentary seat because the vote was spread across the country. The Referendum Party disbanded following Goldsmith's death in 1997.[citation needed]. The UK Independence Party (UKIP), a Eurosceptic political party, was formed in response to Maastricht in 1993. In 1997, Nigel Farage took over the leadership of the party as a right-of-centre, populist movement in England.[41]

Prior to 2013, the issue of EU membership never scored higher than 5% on surveys of voter priorities, polling just 6% in 2013[42] and 11% in 2014.[43] However, an increasing proportion of voters viewed immigration and asylum as of key importance.[44] By adopting a hardline anti-immigration platform and conflating the issue with EU membership, UKIP was able to achieve electoral success, reaching third place in the UK during the 2004 European elections, second place in the 2009 European elections and first place in the 2014 European elections, with 27.5% of the total vote. This was the first time since the 1910 general election that any party other than Labour or the Conservatives had taken the largest share of the vote in a nationwide election.[45] This electoral success and internal pressure, including from many of the remaining Maastricht Rebels within the ruling Conservative party, put pressure on leader and Prime Minister David Cameron, as potential voter defections to UKIP threatened defeat in the 2015 United Kingdom general election. This threat was emphasised by UKIP winning two by-elections (in Clacton and Rochester and Strood, triggered by defecting Conservative MPs) in 2014.[46]

Opinion polls 1977–2015

Main article: Opinion polling for the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum

Both pro- and anti-EU views had majority support at different times from 1977 to 2015.[47] In the EC membership referendum of 1975, two-thirds of British voters favoured continued EC membership. Over the decades of UK-EU membership, Euroscepticism existed on both the left and right of British politics.[48][49][50]

According to a statistical analysis published in April 2016 by Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University, surveys showed an increase in Euroscepticism (broadly defined as a wish to leave the EU or stay in the EU and try to reduce the EU's powers) from 38% in 1993 to 65% in 2015. The BSA survey for the period of July–November 2015 showed that 60% backed the option to continue as a member and 30% backed withdrawal.[51]

Referendum of 2016

Main article: 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum

Negotiations for membership reform

Main article: 2015–2016 United Kingdom renegotiation of European Union membership

In 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron initially rejected calls for a referendum on the UK's EU membership,[52] but then suggested the possibility of a future referendum to endorse his proposed renegotiation of Britain's relationship with the rest of the EU.[53] According to the BBC, "The prime minister acknowledged the need to ensure the UK's [renegotiated] position within the [EU] had 'the full-hearted support of the British people' but they needed to show 'tactical and strategic patience'."[54] On 23 January 2013, under pressure from many of his MPs and from the rise of UKIP, Cameron promised in his Bloomberg speech that a Conservative government would hold an in-or-out referendum on EU membership before the end of 2017, on a renegotiated package, if elected in the 7 May 2015 general election.[55] This was included in the Conservative Party manifesto for the election.[56][57]

The Conservative Party won the election with a majority. Soon afterwards, the European Union Referendum Act 2015 was introduced into Parliament to enable the referendum. Cameron favoured remaining in a reformed EU, and sought to renegotiate on four key points: protection of the single market for non-eurozone countries, reduction of "red tape", exempting Britain from "ever-closer union", and restricting immigration from the rest of the EU.[58]

In December 2015, opinion polls showed a clear majority in favour of remaining in the EU; they also showed support would drop if Cameron did not negotiate adequate safeguards[definition needed] for non-eurozone member states, and restrictions on benefits for non-UK EU citizens.[59]

The outcome of the renegotiations was revealed in February 2016. Some limits to in-work benefits for new EU immigrants were agreed, but before they could be applied, a member state such as the UK would have to get permission from the European Commission and then from the European Council, which is composed of the heads of government of every member state.[60]

In a speech to the House of Commons on 22 February 2016, Cameron announced a referendum date of 23 June 2016, and commented on the renegotiation settlement.[61] He spoke of an intention to trigger the Article 50 process immediately following a Leave vote and of the "two-year time period to negotiate the arrangements for exit."[62]

After the original wording for the referendum question was challenged,[63] the government agreed to change the official referendum question to "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"

Referendum result

Main article: Results of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum

In the referendum 51.89% voted in favour of leaving the EU (Leave), and 48.11% voted in favour of remaining a member of the EU (Remain).[64][65] After this result, Cameron resigned on 13 July 2016, with Theresa May becoming Prime Minister after a leadership contest. A petition calling for a second referendum attracted more than four million signatures,[66][67] but was rejected by the government on 9 July.[68]

2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum Choice Votes %

Leave the European Union 17,410,742 51.89

Remain a member of the European Union 16,141,241 48.11

Valid votes 33,551,983 99.92

Invalid or blank votes 25,359 0.08

Total votes 33,577,342 100.00

Registered voters/turnout 46,500,001 72.21

Source: Electoral Commission[69]

National referendum results (excluding invalid votes)

Leave

17,410,742 (51.9%) Remain

16,141,241 (48.1%)

50%

Results by UK voting region (left) and by council district/unitary authority (GB) & UK Parliament constituency (NI) (right)

  Leave

  Remain

Region Electorate Voter turnout,

of eligible Votes Proportion of votes Invalid votes

Remain Leave Remain Leave

  East Midlands 3,384,299 74.2% 1,033,036 1,475,479 41.18% 58.82% 1,981

  East of England 4,398,796 75.7% 1,448,616 1,880,367 43.52% 56.48% 2,329

  Greater London 5,424,768 69.7% 2,263,519 1,513,232 59.93% 40.07% 4,453

  North East England 1,934,341 69.3% 562,595 778,103 41.96% 58.04% 689

  North West England 5,241,568 70.0% 1,699,020 1,966,925 46.35% 53.65% 2,682

  Northern Ireland 1,260,955 62.7% 440,707 349,442 55.78% 44.22% 374

  Scotland 3,987,112 67.2% 1,661,191 1,018,322 62.00% 38.00% 1,666

  South East England 6,465,404 76.8% 2,391,718 2,567,965 48.22% 51.78% 3,427

  South West England (inc Gibraltar) 4,138,134 76.7% 1,503,019 1,669,711 47.37% 52.63% 2,179

  Wales 2,270,272 71.7% 772,347 854,572 47.47% 52.53% 1,135

  West Midlands 4,116,572 72.0% 1,207,175 1,755,687 40.74% 59.26% 2,507

  Yorkshire and the Humber 3,877,780 70.7% 1,158,298 1,580,937 42.29% 57.71% 1,937

Voter demographics and trends

Further information: Causes of the vote in favour of Brexit

A 2017 study published in the journal Economic Policy showed that the Leave vote tended to be greater in areas which had lower incomes and high unemployment, a strong tradition of manufacturing employment, and in which the population had fewer qualifications. It also tended to be greater where there was a large flow of Eastern European migrants (mainly low-skilled workers) into areas with a large share of native low-skilled workers.[70] Those in lower social grades (especially the working class) were more likely to vote Leave, while those in higher social grades (especially the upper middle class) more likely to vote Remain.[71][72][73] Studies found that the Leave vote tended to be higher in areas affected by economic decline,[74] high rates of suicides and drug-related deaths,[75] and austerity reforms introduced in 2010.[76]

Studies suggest that older people were more likely to vote Leave, and younger people more likely to vote Remain.[77] According to Thomas Sampson, an economist at the London School of Economics, "Older and less-educated voters were more likely to vote 'leave' [...] A majority of white voters wanted to leave, but only 33% of Asian voters and 27% of black voters chose leave. [...] Leaving the European Union received support from across the political spectrum [...] Voting to leave the European Union was strongly associated with holding socially conservative political beliefs, opposing cosmopolitanism, and thinking life in Britain is getting worse."[78]

Polling conducted by YouGov supported these conclusions, showing that factors such as age, political party affiliation, education, and household income were the primary factors indicating how people would vote. For example, Conservative Party voters were 61% likely to vote leave, compared to Labour Party voters, who were 35% likely to vote leave. Age was one of the biggest factors affecting whether someone would vote leave, with 64% of people over the age of 65 likely to vote leave, whereas 18–24-year-olds were only 29% likely to vote leave. Education was another factor indicating voting likelihood: people with a GCSE or lower level of education were 70% likely to vote leave, whereas university graduates were only 32% likely to vote leave. Household income was another important factor, with households earning less than £20,000 62% likely to vote leave, compared to households earning £60,000 or more, which were only 35% likely to vote leave.[79]

There were major variations in geographic support for each side. Scotland and Northern Ireland both returned majorities for remain, although these had a relatively small impact on the overall result as England has a much larger population. There were also significant regional differences within England, with most of London returning a majority remain vote, alongside urban centres in northern England such as Manchester and Liverpool, which returned remain majorities of 60% and 58% respectively. Opposite trends appeared in industrial and post-industrial areas of Northern England, with areas such as North Lincolnshire and South Tyneside both heavily supporting leave.[80]

Opinion polls found that Leave voters believed leaving the EU was "more likely to bring about a better immigration system, improved border controls, a fairer welfare system, better quality of life, and the ability to control our own laws", while Remain voters believed EU membership "would be better for the economy, international investment, and the UK's influence in the world." Polls found that the main reasons people voted Leave were "the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK", and that leaving "offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders." The main reason people voted Remain was that "the risks of voting to leave the EU looked too great when it came to things like the economy, jobs and prices."[81]

Post-referendum investigations

See also: European Union membership referendum § Investigations into campaigns, and Allegations of unlawful campaigning in the 2016 EU referendum

Following the referendum, a series of irregularities related to campaign spending were investigated by the Electoral Commission, which subsequently issued a large number of fines. In February 2017, the main campaign group for the "Leave" vote, Leave.EU, was fined £50,000 for sending marketing messages without permission.[82] In December 2017, the Electoral Commission fined two pro-EU groups, the Liberal Democrats (£18,000) and Open Britain (£1,250), for breaches of campaign finance rules during the referendum campaign.[83] In May 2018, the Electoral Commission fined Leave.EU £70,000 for unlawfully overspending and inaccurately reporting loans from Arron Banks totalling £6 million.[84] Smaller fines were levelled against the pro-EU campaign group Best for Our Future and two trade union donors for inaccurate reporting.[85] In July 2018 Vote Leave was fined £61,000 for overspending, not declaring finances shared with BeLeave, and failing to comply with investigators.[86]

In November 2017, the Electoral Commission launched a probe into claims that Russia had attempted to sway public opinion over the referendum using social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.[87]

In February 2019, the parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee called for an inquiry into "foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation, and the sharing of data" in the Brexit vote.[88]

In July 2020, Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament published a report which accused the UK government of actively avoiding investigating whether Russia interfered with public opinion. The report did not pass judgement over whether Russian information operations had an impact on the result.[89]

Withdrawal process

Further information: Withdrawal from the European Union

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union

Withdrawal from the European Union is governed by Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. It was originally drafted by Lord Kerr of Kinlochard,[90] and introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon which entered into force in 2009.[91] The article states that any member state can withdraw "in accordance with its own constitutional requirements" by notifying the European Council of its intention to do so.[92] The notification triggers a two-year negotiation period, in which the EU must "negotiate and conclude an agreement with [the leaving] State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the [European] Union".[93] If no agreement is reached within the two years, the membership ends without an agreement, unless an extension is unanimously agreed among all EU states, including the withdrawing state.[93] On the EU side, the agreement needs to be ratified by qualified majority in the European Council, and by the European Parliament.[93]

Invocation of Article 50

Main article: United Kingdom invocation of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union

Letter from Theresa May invoking Article 50

The 2015 Referendum Act did not expressly require Article 50 to be invoked,[93] but prior to the referendum, the British government said it would respect the result.[94] When Cameron resigned following the referendum, he said that it would be for the incoming prime minister to invoke Article 50.[95][96] The new prime minister, Theresa May, said she would wait until 2017 to invoke the article, in order to prepare for the negotiations.[97] In October 2016, she said Britain would trigger Article 50 in March 2017,[98] and in December she gained the support of MP's for her timetable.[99]

In January 2017, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled in the Miller case that government could only invoke Article 50 if authorised by an act of parliament to do so.[100] The government subsequently introduced a bill for that purpose, and it was passed into law on 16 March as the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017.[101] On 29 March, Theresa May triggered Article 50 when Tim Barrow, the British ambassador to the EU, delivered the invocation letter to European Council President Donald Tusk. This made 29 March 2019 the expected date that UK would leave EU.[102][103]

2017 UK general election

See also: 2017 United Kingdom general election

A map presenting the results of the 2017 United Kingdom general election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency, with Conservatives in blue, Labour in red, and SNP in yellow

In April 2017, Theresa May called a snap general election, held on 8 June, in an attempt to "strengthen [her] hand" in the negotiations;[104] The Conservative Party, Labour and UKIP made manifesto pledges to implement the referendum, the Labour manifesto differing in its approach to Brexit negotiations, such as unilaterally offering permanent residence to EU immigrants.[105][106][107] The Liberal Democrat Party and the Green Party manifestos proposed a policy of remaining in the EU via a second referendum.[108][109][110] The Scottish National Party (SNP) manifesto proposed a policy of waiting for the outcome of the Brexit negotiations and then holding a referendum on Scottish independence.[111][112]

The result produced an unexpected hung parliament, the governing Conservatives gained votes and remained the largest party but nevertheless lost seats and their majority in the House of Commons. Labour gained significantly on votes and seats, retaining its position as the second-largest party. The Liberal Democrats gained six seats despite a slight decrease in vote share compared with 2015. The Green Party kept its single MP while also losing national vote share. Losing votes and seats were the SNP, which lost 21 MPs, and UKIP, which suffered a −10.8% swing and lost its only MP. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin also made gains in votes and seats.[113]

On 26 June 2017, Conservatives and the DUP reached a confidence and supply agreement whereby the DUP would back the Conservatives in key votes in the House of Commons over the course of the parliament. The agreement included additional funding of £1 billion for Northern Ireland, highlighted mutual support for Brexit and national security, expressed commitment to the Good Friday Agreement, and indicated that policies such as the state pension triple lock and Winter Fuel Payments would be maintained.[114][115]

UK–EU negotiations in 2017 and 2018

Main article: Brexit negotiations

Prior to the negotiations, May said that the British government would not seek permanent single market membership, would end ECJ jurisdiction, seek a new trade agreement, end free movement of people and maintain the Common Travel Area with Ireland.[116] The EU had adopted its negotiating directives in May,[117] and appointed Michel Barnier as Chief Negotiator.[118] The EU wished to perform the negotiations in two phases: first the UK would agree to a financial commitment and to lifelong benefits for EU citizens in Britain, and then negotiations on a future relationship could begin.[119] In the first phase, the member states would demand that the UK pay a "divorce bill", initially estimated as amounting to £52 billion.[120] EU negotiators said that an agreement must be reached between UK and the EU by October 2018.[121]

Negotiations commenced on 19 June 2017.[118] Negotiating groups were established for three topics: the rights of EU citizens living in Britain and vice versa; Britain's outstanding financial obligations to the EU; and the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.[122][123][124] In December 2017, a partial agreement was reached. It ensured that there would be no hard border in Ireland, protected the rights of UK citizens in the EU and of EU citizens in Britain, and estimated the financial settlement to be £35–39 billion.[125] May stressed that "Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed".[126] Following this partial agreement, EU leaders agreed to move on to the second phase in the negotiations: discussion of the future relationship, a transition period and a possible trade deal.[127]

In March 2018, a 21-month transition period and the terms for it were provisionally agreed.[128] In June 2018, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that there had been little progress on the Irish border question—on which the EU proposed a backstop, to come into effect if no overall trade deal had been reached by the end of the transition period—and that it was unlikely that there would be a solution before October, when the whole deal was to be agreed.[129] In July 2018, the British government published the Chequers plan, containing its aims for the future relationship that was to be determined in the negotiations. The plan sought to keep British access to the single market for goods, but not necessarily for services, while allowing for an independent trade policy.[130] The plan caused cabinet resignations, including those of Brexit Secretary David Davis[131] and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.[132]

May's agreement and failed ratification

Main articles: Brexit withdrawal agreement and Parliamentary votes on Brexit

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

2018 Draft withdrawal agreement

On 13 November 2018, UK and EU negotiators agreed the text of a draft withdrawal agreement,[133] and May secured her Cabinet's backing of the deal the following day,[134] though Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab resigned over "fatal flaws" in the agreement.[135] It was expected that ratification in the British parliament would be difficult.[136][137][138] On 25 November, all 27 leaders of the remaining EU countries endorsed the agreement.[136][137]

On 10 December 2018, the Prime Minister postponed the vote in the House of Commons on her Brexit deal. This came minutes after the Prime Minister's Office confirmed the vote would be going ahead.[139] Faced with the prospect of a defeat in the House of Commons, this option gave May more time to negotiate with Conservative backbenchers and the EU, even though they had ruled out further discussions.[140] The decision was met with calls from many Welsh Labour MPs for a motion of no confidence in the Government.[141]

Also on 10 December 2018, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that the UK could unilaterally revoke its notification of withdrawal, as long as it was still a member and had not agreed a withdrawal agreement. The decision to do so should be "unequivocal and unconditional" and "follow a democratic process".[142] If the British revoked their notification, they would remain a member of the EU under their current membership terms. The case was launched by Scottish politicians and referred to the ECJ by the Scottish Court of Session.[143]

The European Research Group (ERG), a research support group of Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, opposed the Prime Minister's proposed Withdrawal Agreement treaty. Its members objected strongly to the Withdrawal Agreement's inclusion of the Irish backstop.[144][145] ERG members also objected to the proposed £39 billion financial settlement with the EU and stated that the agreement would result in the UK's agreement to continuing to follow EU regulations in major policy areas; and to the continuing jurisdiction of the ECJ over interpretation of the agreement and of European law still applicable to the UK.[146][147]

On 15 January 2019, the House of Commons voted 432 to 202 against the deal, which was the largest majority ever against a United Kingdom government.[148][149] Soon after, a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty's Government was tabled by the opposition,[150] which was rejected by 325 votes to 306.[151]

On 24 February, Prime Minister May proposed that the next vote on the withdrawal agreement would be on 12 March 2019, 17 days away from the Brexit date.[152] On 12 March, the proposal was defeated by 391 votes to 242—a loss by 149 votes, down from 230 from when the deal had been proposed in January.[153]

On 18 March 2019, the Speaker informed the House of Commons that a third meaningful vote could be held only on a motion that was significantly different from the previous one, citing parliamentary precedents going back to 1604.[154]

The Withdrawal Agreement was brought back to the House without the attached understandings on 29 March.[155] The Government's motion of support for the Withdrawal Agreement was defeated by 344 votes to 286—a loss by 58 votes, down from 149 when the deal had been proposed on 12 March.[156]

Article 50 extensions and Johnson's agreement

On 20 March 2019, the Prime Minister wrote to European Council President Tusk requesting that Brexit be postponed until 30 June 2019.[157] On 21 March 2019, May presented her case to a European Council summit meeting in Brussels. After May left the meeting, a discussion amongst the remaining EU leaders resulted in the rejection of 30 June date and offered instead a choice of two new alternative Brexit dates. On 22 March 2019, the extension options were agreed between the British government and the European Council.[158] The first alternative offered was that if MPs rejected May's deal in the next week, Brexit would be due to occur by 12 April 2019, with, or without, a deal—or alternatively another extension be asked for and a commitment to participate in the 2019 European Parliament elections given. The second alternative offered was that if MPs approved May's deal, Brexit would be due to occur on 22 May 2019. The later date was the day before the start of European Parliament elections.[159] After the government deemed unwarranted the concerns over the legality of the proposed change (because it contained two possible exit dates) the previous day,[160] on 27 March 2019 both the Lords (without a vote)[161] and the Commons (by 441 to 105) approved the statutory instrument changing the exit date to 22 May 2019 if a withdrawal deal is approved, or 12 April 2019 if it is not.[162] The amendment was then signed into law at 12:40 p.m. the next day.[158]

Following the failure of the British Parliament to approve the Withdrawal Agreement by 29 March, the UK was required to leave the EU on 12 April 2019. On 10 April 2019, late-night talks in Brussels resulted in a further extension, to 31 October 2019; Theresa May had again requested an extension only until 30 June. Under the terms of this new extension, if the Withdrawal Agreement were to be passed before October, Brexit would occur on the first day of the subsequent month. The UK would then be obligated to hold European Parliament elections in May or leave the EU on 1 June without a deal.[163][164]

In granting the Article 50 extensions, the EU adopted a stance of refusing to "reopen" (that is, renegotiate) the Withdrawal Agreement.[165] After Boris Johnson became prime minister on 24 July 2019 and met with EU leaders, the EU changed its stance. On 17 October 2019, following "tunnel talks" between UK and EU,[166] a revised withdrawal agreement was agreed on negotiators level, and endorsed by the British government and the EU Commission.[167] The revised deal contained a new Northern Ireland Protocol, as well as technical modifications to related articles.[7] In addition, the Political Declaration was also revised.[168] The revised deal and the political declaration was endorsed by the European Council later that day.[169] To come into effect, it needed to be ratified by the European Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom.[170]

The British Parliament passed the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019, which received Royal Assent on 9 September 2019, obliging the Prime Minister to seek a third extension if no agreement has been reached at the next European Council meeting in October 2019.[171] In order for such an extension to be granted if it is requested by the Prime Minister, it would be necessary for there to be unanimous agreement by all other heads of EU governments.[172] On 28 October 2019, the third extension was agreed to by the EU, with a new withdrawal deadline of 31 January 2020.[173] 'Exit day' in British law was then amended to this new date by statutory instrument on 30 October 2019.[174]

2019 UK general election

See also: 2019 United Kingdom general election

A map presenting the results of the 2019 United Kingdom general election, by party of the MP elected from each constituency

After Johnson was unable to induce Parliament to approve a revised version of the withdrawal agreement by the end of October, he chose to call for a snap election. Due to the fact three motions for an early general election under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds super majority for it to pass so instead, in order to circumvent the existing law, the Government introduced an "election bill" which only needed a simple majority of MPs to vote in favour into the House of Commons which was passed by 438–20, setting the election date for Thursday 12 December.[175] Opinion polls up to polling day showed a firm lead for the Conservatives against Labour throughout the campaign.[176]

In the run-up to the general election on 12 December 2019 the Conservative Party pledged to leave the EU with the withdrawal agreement negotiated in October 2019. Labour promised to renegotiate aforementioned deal and hold a referendum, letting voters choose between the renegotiated deal and remain. The Liberal Democrats vowed to revoke Article 50, while the SNP intended to hold a second referendum, however, revoking Article 50 if the alternative was a no-deal exit. The DUP supported Brexit but would seek to change parts related to Northern Ireland it was dissatisfied with. Plaid Cymru and the Green Party backed a second referendum, believing the UK should stay in the EU. The Brexit Party was the only major party running for election which wanted the UK to leave the EU without a deal.[177]

The election produced a decisive result for Boris Johnson with the Conservatives winning 365 seats (gaining 47 seats) and an overall majority of 80 seats with Labour suffering their worst election defeat since 1935 after losing 60 seats to leave them with 202 seats and only a single seat in Scotland. The Liberal Democrats won just 11 seats with their leader Jo Swinson losing her own seat. The Scottish National Party won 48 seats after gaining 14 seats in Scotland.

The result broke the deadlock in the UK Parliament and ended the possibility of a referendum being held on the withdrawal agreement and ensured that the United Kingdom would leave the European Union on 31 January 2020.

Ratification and departure

Foreign and Commonwealth Office illuminated in the colours of the Union Jack on 31 January 2020

Subsequently, the government introduced a bill to ratify the withdrawal agreement. It passed its second reading in the House of Commons in a 358–234 vote on 20 December 2019,[178] and became law on 23 January 2020 as the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020.[179]

The withdrawal agreement received the backing of the constitutional committee in the European Parliament on 23 January 2020, setting expectation that the entire parliament would approve it in a later vote.[180][181][182] On the following day, Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel signed the withdrawal agreement in Brussels, and it was sent to London where Boris Johnson signed it.[10] The European Parliament gave its consent to ratification on 29 January by 621 votes to 49.[183][11] Immediately after voting approval, members of the European Parliament joined hands and sang Auld Lang Syne.[184] The Council of the European Union concluded EU ratification the following day.[185] At 11 p.m. GMT, 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union ended, 47 years after it had joined.[12] As confirmed by the Court of Justice in EP v Préfet du Gers,[186] all British nationals ceased to be Union citizens.[187]

Transition period and final trade agreement

Conservative party advertisement from early 2020 featuring Boris Johnson answering frequently searched for online Brexit-related questions

Following the British exit on 31 January 2020 the UK entered a Transition Period for the rest of 2020. Trade, travel and freedom of movement remain largely unchanged during this period.[188]

The Withdrawal Agreement still applies after this date.[189] This agreement provides free access of goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, provided checks are made to goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. The British Government attempted to back out of this commitment[190] by passing the Internal Market Bill: domestic legislation in the British Parliament. In September, Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis said:

    I would say to my hon. Friend that yes, this does break international law in a very specific and limited way.[191]

leading to the resignation of Sir Jonathan Jones, permanent secretary to the Government Legal Department[192] and Lord Keen, the law officer for Scotland.[193] The European Commission started legal action.[189]

During the transition period, David Frost and Michel Barnier continued to negotiate a permanent trade agreement.[194] On 24 December 2020 both parties announced that a deal had been reached.[195] The deal was passed by both houses of the British parliament on 30 December and given Royal Assent in the early hours of the next day. In the House of Commons, the governing Conservatives and main opposition Labour voted in favour of the agreement whilst all other opposition parties voted against it.[196] The transition period concluded under its terms the following evening.[197] After the UK said it would unilaterally extend a grace period limiting checks on trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, the European Parliament postponed setting a date to ratify the agreement.[198] The vote was later scheduled for 27 April when it passed with an overwhelming majority of votes.[199][200]

There was a customs transitional arrangement in place until 1 July 2021. During this time period, traders importing standard goods from the EU to the UK could defer submitting their customs declarations and paying import duties to HMRC for up to six months. This arrangement simplified and avoided most import controls during the early months of the new situation and was designed to facilitate inward trade during the COVID-19 health crisis and to avoid major disruptions in domestic supply chains in the short term.[201] Following reports that the border infrastructure was not ready, the UK government further postponed import checks from the EU to the UK until the end of the year in order to avoid supply issues during the ongoing Covid crisis.[202] This was again followed by another delay of import controls, in a situation of truck driver shortages; the controls are scheduled to be phased in during 2022.[203]

United Kingdom legislation after Article 50 notification

European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018

Main article: European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018

In October 2016, Theresa May promised a "Great Repeal Bill", which would repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and restate in British law all enactments previously in force under EU law. Subsequently renamed the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, it was introduced into the House of Commons on 13 July 2017.[204]

On 12 September 2017, the Bill passed its first vote and second reading by a margin of 326 votes to 290 votes in the House of Commons.[205] The Bill was further amended on a series of votes in both Houses. After the Act became law on 26 June 2018, the European Council decided on 29 June to renew its call on member states and European Union institutions to step up their work on preparedness at all levels and for all outcomes.[206]

The Withdrawal Act fixed the period ending 21 January 2019 for the government to decide on how to proceed if the negotiations had not reached agreement in principle on both the withdrawal arrangements and the framework for the future relationship between the UK and EU; while, alternatively, making future ratification of the withdrawal agreement as a treaty between the UK and EU depend upon the prior enactment of another act of Parliament for approving the final terms of withdrawal when the Brexit negotiations were completed. In any event, the Act did not alter the two-year period for negotiating allowed by Article 50 that ended at the latest on 29 March 2019 if the UK had not by then ratified a withdrawal agreement or agreed a prolongation of the negotiating period.[207]

The Withdrawal Act which became law in June 2018 allowed for various outcomes including no negotiated settlement. It authorises the government to bring into force, by order made under section 25, the provisions that fixed "exit day" and the repeal of the European Communities Act 1972 but exit day must be the same day and time as when the EU Treaties ceased to apply to the UK.[208]

Exit day

Exit day was the end of 31 January 2020 CET (11.00 p.m. GMT).[174] The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (as amended by a British Statutory Instrument on 11 April 2019), in section 20 (1), defined 'exit day' as 11:00 p.m. on 31 October 2019.[158] Originally, 'exit day' was defined as 11:00 p.m. on 29 March 2019 GMT (UTC+0).[207][209][210]

Additional government bills

A report published in March 2017 by the Institute for Government commented that, in addition to the European Union (Withdrawal) bill, primary and secondary legislation would be needed to cover the gaps in policy areas such as customs, immigration and agriculture.[211] The report also commented that the role of the devolved legislatures was unclear, and could cause problems, and that as many as 15 new additional Brexit Bills might be required, which would involve strict prioritisation and limiting Parliamentary time for in-depth examination of new legislation.[212]

In 2016 and 2017, the House of Lords published a series of reports on Brexit-related subjects, including:

    Brexit: the options for trade

    Brexit: UK–Irish relations

    Brexit: future UK–EU security and police cooperation

    Brexit: fisheries

    Brexit: environment and climate change

    Brexit: the Crown Dependencies

    Brexit: justice for families, individuals and businesses?

    Brexit: trade in non-financial services

Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018

The Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018, relating to withdrawal from Euratom, was presented to Parliament in October 2017. The act makes provision about nuclear safeguards, and for connected purposes. The Secretary of State may by regulations ("nuclear safeguards regulations") make provision for the purpose of – (a) ensuring that qualifying nuclear material, facilities or equipment are available only for use for civil activities (whether in the UK or elsewhere), or (b) giving effect to provisions of a relevant international agreement.[213]

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020

Main article: European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020

The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 makes legal provision for ratifying the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and incorporating it into the domestic law of the United Kingdom.[214] The bill was first introduced[215] by the government on 21 October 2019. This bill was not further debated and lapsed on 6 November when parliament was dissolved in preparation for the 2019 general election. The bill was reintroduced immediately following the general election and was the first bill to be put before the House of Commons in the first session of the 58th Parliament,[216] with changes from the previous bill, by the re-elected government and was read a first time on 19 December, immediately after the first reading of the Outlawries Bill and before the debate on the Queen's Speech began. The second reading took place on 20 December, and the third on 9 January 2020. This act was given Royal Assent on 23 January 2020, nine days before the UK left the European Union.

Public opinion since the Brexit referendum

Prior to 2020

Further information: Opinion polling on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union (2016–2020)

Opinion polling overall showed an initial fall in support for Brexit from the referendum to late 2016, when responses were split evenly between support and opposition. Support rose again to a plurality, which held until the 2017 general election. Since then, opinion polls tended to show a plurality of support for remaining in the EU or for the view that Brexit was a mistake, with the estimated margin increasing until a small decrease in 2019 (to 53% Remain: 47% Leave, as of October 2019).[217] This seems to be largely due to a preference for remaining in the EU among those who did not vote in 2016's referendum (an estimated 2.5 million of whom, as of October 2019, were too young to vote at the time).[218][219] Other reasons suggested include slightly more Leave voters than Remain voters (14% and 12% of each, respectively, as of October 2019)[220] changing how they would vote (particularly in Labour areas) and the deaths of older voters,[217] most of whom voted to leave the EU. One estimate of demographic changes (ignoring other effects) implies that had an EU referendum taken place in October 2019, there would have been between 800,000 and 900,000 fewer Leave voters and between 600,000 and 700,000 more Remain voters, resulting in a Remain majority.[218]

In March 2019, a petition submitted to the British Parliament petitions website, calling on the government to revoke Article 50 and stay in the EU, reached a record-level of more than 6.1 million signatures.[221][222]

    Post-referendum opinion polling (2016–2020)

    Opinion polling on whether the UK was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU

    Opinion polling on whether the UK was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU

    Opinion polling on whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU, including "Neither" responses

    Opinion polling on whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU, including "Neither" responses

    Opinion polling on whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU, excluding "Neither" responses and normalised

    Opinion polling on whether the UK should leave or remain in the EU, excluding "Neither" responses and normalised

2020–present

Further information: Opinion polling on the United Kingdom rejoining the European Union (2020–present)

YouGov polling has shown a gradual but progressive decline in the public perception of the benefits of Brexit, with the overall margin of sentiment about the rightness of the Brexit decision declining from slightly positive in 2016 to −11% in 2022.[223] A May 2022 poll showed that a majority of respondents who expressed an opinion thought that Brexit had gone either "badly" or "very badly".[224] A new study showed that since Brexit, citizens in other European nations were more against leaving the EU than they had been since 2016.[225] A January 2023 poll in the United Kingdom also reflected these numbers with 54% of poll respondents who believed that the country was wrong to leave the European Union, while 35% of respondents believed it was the right decision.[226] An average of six polls conducted in June and July 2023 shows 58% of voters in favor of rejoining the EU with 42% of voters against rejoining the EU.[227]

Since 2020, pollsters have asked respondents, how they would vote in a potential second referendum to rejoin the EU.

Opinion polling on whether the United Kingdom should rejoin the European Union (since January 2020)

No-deal planning

See also: No-deal Brexit and Operation Yellowhammer

On 19 December 2018, the EU Commission revealed its "no-deal" Contingency Action Plan in specific sectors, in respect of the UK leaving the EU "in 100 days' time."[228]

In the wake of the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, the Department for International Trade (DIT) for reaching and extending trade agreements between the UK and non-EU states was created by Prime Minister May, shortly after she took office on 13 July 2016.[229] By 2017, it employed about 200 trade negotiators[230] and was overseen by then Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox. In March 2019, the British government announced that it would cut many import tariffs to zero, in the event of a no-deal Brexit.[231] The Confederation of British Industry said the move would be a "sledgehammer for our economy",[232][233][234] and the National Farmer's Union was also highly critical.[235] Additionally, the plan appeared to breach standard WTO rules.[236][237][238]

On 2 June 2020, Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel stated that the European Union must prepare for the possible failure of Brexit trade talks with the UK. She added that negotiations were being accelerated to try and reach a deal that could be ratified by the end of the year. Her warning came as the deadline for extending talks passed, with negotiations expected to end on 31 December with or without a deal.[239]

Litigation

There has been litigation to explore the constitutional footings on which Brexit stands after R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (simply known as the "Miller case") and the 2017 Notification Act:

    In R. (Webster) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, a Divisional Court of Gross LJ and Green MR determined that the substantive decision to leave the EU that was notified on 29 March 2017 was in fact the executive decision of the Prime Minister using a statutory power of decision found to have been delegated to her by the Notification Act: this is confirmed by the House of Commons Library commentary on the case.[240] The case was appealed to the Court of Appeal[241] and paragraph 15 of the judgement, along with the citable nature of the decision were upheld. While the case was criticised academically by Robert Craig, who lectures in jurisprudence at the London School of Economics,[242] aspects of the case's analysis were supported by the Supreme Court in Miller 2 at paragraph 57, which confirmed:

    ... that Parliament, and in particular the House of Commons as the democratically elected representatives of the people, has a right to have a voice in how that change comes about is indisputable.[243]

    — Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (UKSC/2019/41)

    This confirmation that the decision was an executive act was part of the basis of R. (Wilson) v. Prime Minister[244] which allied this point with the concerns about the irregularities in the referendum. The High Court hearing was on 7 December 2018 before Ouseley MJ[245] and when judgement was given it was held that: courts' job was not to rule on irregularities in the 'leave' campaign as these were not questions of law; it was also said that the case was brought both too early and too late.[240] Judgement in the Court of Appeal (before Hickinbottom LJ and Haddon-Cave LJ) before also went against the applicant.[246]

    Regarding the reversibility of a notification under Article 50, Wightman and others v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union was referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union;[247] the UK government sought to block this referral, taking the matter on appeal to the Supreme Court, but was unsuccessful.[248] On 10 December 2018, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled that the UK could unilaterally revoke its Article 50 notification.[249]

Impact

"Impact of Brexit" redirects here. For predicted impact, see Predicted impact of Brexit.

Many effects of Brexit depended on whether the UK left with a withdrawal agreement, or before an agreement was ratified ("no-deal" Brexit).[250] In 2017, the Financial Times said that there were approximately 759 international agreements, spanning 168 non-EU countries, that the UK would no longer be a party to upon leaving the EU.[251]

Economic effects

Main article: Economic effects of Brexit

Economists speculated that Brexit would have a damaging impact on the economies of the UK and at least part of the EU27. In particular, there was a broad consensus among economists, and in the economic literature, that Brexit would likely reduce the UK's real per capita income in the medium and long term, and that the Brexit referendum itself would damage the economy.[78][252][253] Studies found Brexit-induced uncertainty reduced British GDP, British national income, investment by business, employment and British international trade from June 2016 onwards.[254][255][256]

A 2019 analysis found that British firms substantially increased offshoring to the EU after the Brexit referendum, whereas European firms reduced new investments in the UK.[257][258] The British government's Brexit analysis, leaked in January 2018, showed British economic growth would be stunted by 2–8% over the 15 years following Brexit, the amount depending on the leave scenario.[259][260] Economists warned that London's future as an international financial centre depended on passport agreements with the EU.[261][262] Pro-Brexit activists and politicians have argued for negotiating trade and migration agreements with the "CANZUK" countries—those of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom[263][264]—but economists have said that trade deals with those countries would be far less valuable to the UK than EU membership.[265][266][267] Studies projected that Brexit would exacerbate regional economic inequality in the UK, by hitting already-struggling regions the hardest.[268]

Local and geographic effects

Border crossing at Killeen (near Newry in Northern Ireland), marked only by a speed limit in km/h (Northern Ireland uses mph.)

The potential impact on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has been a contentious issue. Since 2005, the border had been essentially invisible.[269] After Brexit, it became the only UK–EU land border[270] (not counting the land borders EU states, Spain and Cyprus, have with British Overseas Territories). All involved parties agreed a hard border should be avoided,[271] for it might compromise the Good Friday Agreement that ended the Northern Ireland conflict.[272][273][274] To forestall this, the EU proposed a "backstop agreement" that would have kept the UK in the Customs Union and kept Northern Ireland in some aspects of the Single Market also, until a lasting solution was found.[275] The UK Parliament rejected this proposal. After further negotiations in autumn of 2019, an alternative model, the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol was agreed between the UK and the EU. Under the Protocol, Northern Ireland is formally outside the EU single market, but EU free movement of goods rules and EU Customs Union rules still apply; this ensures there are no customs checks or controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the island. In place of an Ireland/Northern Ireland land border, the protocol has created a de facto customs "Irish Sea border" for goods from (but not to) Great Britain,[276][277] to the disquiet of prominent Unionists.[278]

After the Brexit referendum, the Scottish Government – led by the Scottish National Party (SNP) – planned another independence referendum because Scotland voted to remain in the EU while England and Wales voted to leave.[279] It had suggested this before the Brexit referendum.[280] The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, requested a referendum be held before the UK's withdrawal,[281] but the British Prime Minister rejected this timing, but not the referendum itself.[282] At the referendum in 2014, 55% of voters had decided to remain in the UK, but the referendum on Britain's withdrawal from the EU was held in 2016, with 62% of Scottish voters against it. In March 2017, the Scottish Parliament voted in favour of holding another independence referendum. Sturgeon called for a "phased return" of an independent Scotland back to the EU.[283] In 2017, if Northern Ireland remained associated with the EU – for example, by remaining in the Customs Union, some analysts argued Scotland would also insist on special treatment.[284] However, in the event, the only part of the United Kingdom which received unique treatment was Northern Ireland.[285]

On 21 March 2018, the Scottish Parliament passed the Scottish Continuity Bill.[286] This was passed due to stalling negotiations between the Scottish Government and the British Government on where powers within devolved policy areas should lie after Brexit. The Act allowed for all devolved policy areas to remain within the remit of the Scottish Parliament and reduces the executive power upon exit day that the UK Withdrawal Bill provides for Ministers of the Crown.[287] The bill was referred to the UK Supreme Court, which found that it could not come into force as the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which received royal assent between the Scottish Parliament passing its bill and the Supreme Court's judgement, designated itself under schedule 4 of the Scotland Act 1998 as unamendable by the Scottish Parliament.[288] The bill has therefore not received royal assent.[289]

Cars crossing into Gibraltar from Spain clearing customs formalities. Gibraltar is outside the customs union, VAT area, and Schengen Zone.

Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory bordering Spain, is affected by Brexit too. Spain asserts a territorial claim on Gibraltar. After the referendum, Spain's Foreign Minister renewed calls for joint Spanish–British control.[290] In late 2018, the British and Spanish governments agreed that any dispute over Gibraltar would not affect Brexit negotiations,[291] and the British government agreed that UK–EU treaties made after Brexit would not automatically apply to Gibraltar.[292] In December 2020, Spain and the UK reached an agreement in principle on future arrangements for Brexit and invited the European Commission to formalise it as a treaty.

The French and British governments say they remain committed to the Le Touquet Agreement, which lets UK border checks be completed in France, and vice versa (juxtaposed controls).[293] The two governments signed the Sandhurst Treaty in January 2018, which will shorten the time taken to process migrants attempting to reach the UK from Calais, from six months to one month. The UK also announced it will invest a further £44.5 million on border security at the English Channel.[293]

Effects on the European Union

Main article: Impact of Brexit on the European Union

Brexit caused the European Union to lose its second-largest economy, its third-most populous country,[294] and the second-largest net contributor to the EU budget.[295]

The UK is no longer a shareholder in the European Investment Bank, where it had 16% of the shares.[296] The European Investment Bank's Board of Governors decided that the remaining member states would proportionally increase their capital subscriptions to maintain the same level of overall subscribed capital (EUR 243.3 billion).[297] As of March 2020, the subscribed capital of the EIB had increased by an additional EUR 5.5 billion, following the decision by two member states to increase their capital subscriptions (Poland and Romania). The EIB's total subscribed capital thus amounted to EUR 248.8 billion. Brexit did not impact the EIB Group's AAA credit rating.[298]

Analyses indicated that the departure of the relatively economically liberal UK would reduce the ability of remaining economically liberal countries to block measures in the Council of the EU.[299][300] In 2019, ahead of Brexit, the European Medicines Agency and European Banking Authority moved their headquarters from London to Amsterdam and Paris, respectively.[301][302][303]

Sectorial effects

The UK has left the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP),[304] which provides government financial support to farmers in the EU.[305] Brexit allowed the UK to develop its own agriculture policy[306] and the Agriculture Act 2020 replaced the CAP with a new system.[307] The UK did also leave the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP)[308] that lets all EU countries fish within 12 nautical miles of the British coast[309] and lets the EU set catch quotas.[310] The combined EU fishing fleets landed about six million tonnes of fish per year, as of 2016,[311] about half of which were from British waters.[312] By leaving the CFP, the UK could develop its own fisheries policy.[310] The UK did also leave the London Fisheries Convention that lets Irish, French, Belgian, Dutch and German vessels fish within six nautical miles of the UK's coast.[313]

Brexit poses challenges to British academia and research, as the UK loses research funding from EU sources and sees a reduction in students from the EU. Academic institutions find it harder to hire researchers from the EU and British students will face greater difficulties with studying abroad in the EU.[314] The UK was a member of the European Research Area and likely to wish to remain an associated member following Brexit.[315] The British government has guaranteed funding for research currently funded by EU.[316]

An early 2019 study found that Brexit would deplete the National Health Service (NHS) workforce, create uncertainties regarding care for British nationals living in the EU, and put at risk access to vaccines, equipment, and medicines.[317] The Department of Health and Social Care has said it has taken steps to ensure the continuity of medical supplies after Brexit.[318] The number of non-British EU nurses registering with the NHS fell from 1,304 in July 2016 to 46 in April 2017.[319][needs update]In June 2016, 58,702 NHS staff recorded a non-British EU nationality, and in June 2022, 70,735 NHS staff recorded an EU nationality. However, "to present this as the full story would be misleading, because there are over 57,000 more staff for whom nationality is known now than in 2016"[320][321]

Under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, EU laws will no longer have supremacy over British laws after Brexit.[322] To maintain continuity, the Act converts EU law into British law as "retained EU law". After Brexit, the British parliament (and the devolved legislatures) can decide which elements of that law to keep, amend or repeal.[322] Furthermore, British courts will no longer be bound by the judgments of the EU Court of Justice after Brexit.

After Brexit, the UK is able to control immigration from the EU and EEA,[323] as it can end EU freedom of movement. The current British government intends to replace it with a new system[needs update] The government's 2018 white paper proposes a "skills-based immigration system" that prioritises skilled migrants. EU and EEA citizens already living in the UK can continue living there after Brexit by applying to the EU Settlement Scheme, which began in March 2019. Irish citizens will not have to apply to the scheme.[324][325][326] Studies estimate that Brexit and the end of free movement will likely result in a large decline in immigration from EEA countries to the UK.[327][328] After Brexit, any foreigner wanting to do so more than temporarily would need a work permit.[329][330]

By leaving the EU, the UK would leave the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA), a single market in commercial air travel,[331] but could negotiate a number of different future relationships with the EU.[331] British airlines would still have permission to operate within the EU with no restrictions, and vice versa. The British government seeks continued participation in the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).[331] The UK has its own air service agreements with 111 countries, which permit flights to-and-from the country, and further 17 countries through its EU membership.[332] These have since been replaced. Ferries will continue, but with obstacles such as customs checks.[333] New ferry departures between the Republic of Ireland and the European mainland have been established.[333] As of August 2020, the government's Goods Vehicle Movement Service, an IT system essential to post-Brexit goods movements, was still only in the early stages of beta testing, with four months to go before it is required to be in operation.[334]

Concerns were raised by European lawmakers, including Michel Barnier, that Brexit might create security problems for the UK given that its law enforcement and counter-terrorism forces would no longer have access to the EU's security databases.[335]

Some analysts have suggested that the severe economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK has masked the economic impact of Brexit in 2021.[336] In December 2021, the Financial Times quoted a range of economists as saying that the economic impact of Brexit on the UK economy and living standards "appears to be negative but uncertain".[337] According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the new trade agreement between the EU and UK could, over time, result in a 4% reduction in British productivity, compared with its level had the 2016 EU referendum gone the other way.[338]

Brexit was widely described as a factor contributing to the 2021 United Kingdom natural gas supplier crisis, in which panic buying led to serious disruption of road fuel supplies across the UK, as it exacerbated the UK's shortage of HGV drivers.[339][340][341] In a July 2021 report, the Road Haulage Association estimated the UK faced a shortage of up to 100,000 truck drivers.[342][343][344]

Forecasts were made at the time of the referendum that Brexit would impose trade barriers, leading to a decline in trade between the United Kingdom and the European Union: however after a dip in 2020 as result of worldwide lockdowns, by 2022 trade in both directions had risen to higher levels than before Brexit.[345]

Cultural references

Main article: Brexit in popular culture

Brexit has inspired many creative works, such as murals, sculptures, novels, plays, movies and video games. The response of British artists and writers to Brexit has in general been negative, reflecting a reported overwhelming percentage of people involved in Britain's creative industries voting against leaving the European Union.[346] Despite issues around immigration being central in the Brexit debate, British artists left the migrants' perspective largely unexplored. However, Brexit also inspired UK-based migrant artists to create new works and "claim agency over their representation within public spaces and create a platform for a new social imagination that can facilitate transnational and trans-local encounters, multicultural democratic spaces, sense of commonality, and solidarity."[347]

See also

    flagEuropean Union portaliconModern history portaliconPolitics portalflagUnited Kingdom portal

    International reactions to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum

    Opposition to Brexit

    Referendums related to the European Union

    Multi-speed Europe

    Interpretation of EU Treaty law by European Court of Justice

    2010s in United Kingdom political history

    2020s in United Kingdom political history

    Danish withdrawal from the European Union

    Dutch withdrawal from the European Union

    Frexit

    Greek withdrawal from the eurozone

    Hungarian withdrawal from the European Union

    Polish withdrawal from the European Union

    Romanian withdrawal from the European Union

    Withdrawal from the European Union

Notes

    The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom).

Curtice, John (8 February 2019). "Has There Been a Shift in Support for Brexit?". What UK Thinks. Archived from the original on 16 May 2019. Retrieved 16 May 2019. "Until the 2017 general election typically more people said that the decision to leave the EU was right than stated it was wrong. Since then the oppose has been the case ... The reason why the balance of opinion had shifted in favour of Remain, even though very few Leave voters had changed their minds, was because those who had not voted before (in some cases because they had been too young to do so) were now decisively in favour of Remain."

Curtice, John (17 October 2019). "Have UK voters changed their minds on Brexit?". BBC News. Archived from the original on 23 October 2019. Retrieved 23 October 2019. "On average, during the last month, polls that ask people how they would vote in another referendum suggest that 88% of those who backed Remain would do so again. Among those who voted Leave, 86% have not changed their minds."

"Article 50 petition to cancel Brexit passes 6m signatures". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 3 April 2019. Retrieved 5 June 2019.

"Article 50: MPs debate six-million-signature petition". BBC News. Archived from the original on 10 April 2019. Retrieved 5 June 2019.

"EU Tracker Questions (GB): In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the European Union?" (PDF). YouGov. July 2022. Retrieved 5 June 2022.

"Daily Question | 10 May 2022 | YouGov". yougov.co.uk. Retrieved 5 June 2022.

"Support for leaving EU has fallen significantly across bloc since Brexit". The Guardian. 12 January 2023. Retrieved 12 January 2023.

"Brexit opinion poll 2023". Statista. Retrieved 12 January 2023.

"Post-Brexit Poll of Polls". What UK Thinks: EU. Retrieved 21 July 2023.

"European Commission – PRESS RELEASES – Press release – Brexit: European Commission implements "no-deal" Contingency Action Plan in specific sectors". europa.eu. Archived from the original on 5 September 2019. Retrieved 5 September 2019.

"Theresa May signals Whitehall rejig with two new Cabinet posts". civilserviceworld.com. CSW. Archived from the original on 14 July 2016. Retrieved 14 July 2016.

Trading places / Negotiating post-Brexit deals. Economist, 4–10 February 2017, p. 25

"Temporary tariff regime for no deal Brexit published". GOV.UK. 13 March 2019. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.

O'Carroll, Lisa; Boffey, Daniel (13 March 2019). "UK will cut most tariffs to zero in event of no-deal Brexit". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 14 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.

Glaze, Ben; Bloom, Dan; Owen, Cathy (13 March 2019). "Car prices to rise by £1,500 as no-deal tariffs are revealed". walesonline. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.

"No-deal tariff regime would be 'sledgehammer' to UK economy, CBI warns". Aol.co.uk. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.

"This is why farmers are suddenly very worried about a no-deal Brexit". The Independent. 13 March 2019. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.

"No-deal plans a bid 'to break EU unity'". BBC News. 13 March 2019. Archived from the original on 31 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.

Sandford, Alisdair (13 March 2019). "UK zero-tariff plan for no-deal Brexit would not spare some EU imports" (PDF). Euronews.com. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.

"EU to apply normal tariffs on trade with UK in case of no-deal Brexit". Reuters. 13 March 2019. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019. Retrieved 14 March 2019.

"Brexit: EU must prepare for no-deal, Merkel warns". Independent. Retrieved 2 June 2020.

de Mars, Sylvia; Miller, Vaughne (1 November 2019). "Brexit questions in national and EU courts". commonslibrary.parliament.uk (Research briefing). House of Commons Library. Archived from the original on 24 February 2021.

"Article 50 Challenge". CrowdJustice. Archived from the original on 22 May 2019. Retrieved 20 November 2018.

"Robert Craig: New Article 50 Case Resoundingly Rejected by the Divisional Court". UK Constitutional Law Association. 26 June 2018. Archived from the original on 8 July 2019. Retrieved 20 November 2018.

R (on the application of Miller) v The Prime Minister; Cherry and Others v Advocate General for Scotland [2019] UKSC 41 (24 September 2019)

"Grounds for Judicial Review in Susan Wilson & others -and- The Prime Minister" (PDF). croftsolicitors.com. 13 August 2018. CO/3214/2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 August 2018.

"UKEU Challenge Update" (PDF). UKEU Challenge. Archived (PDF) from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 20 November 2018.

"Wilson & others –v- The Prime Minister (Respondent 1) and The Electoral Commission (Respondent 2)". www.judiciary.uk. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019. Retrieved 4 January 2020.

Maugham, Jolyon (21 September 2018). "Today's ruling shows the triggering of article 50 can be reversed". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 20 November 2018.

UK Supreme Court. "Reasons for the determination in the matter of Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Appellant) v Wightman and others (Respondents)" (PDF). UK Supreme Court. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 November 2018. Retrieved 20 November 2018.

"The United Kingdom is free to revoke unilaterally the notification of its intention to withdraw from the EU" (PDF). Court of Justice of the European Union. 10 December 2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 June 2019. Retrieved 18 January 2019.

"What is a no-deal Brexit? Here are the consequences of the UK leaving the EU without a deal". inews.co.uk. 4 September 2019. Archived from the original on 10 June 2019. Retrieved 20 May 2019.

McClean, Paul (30 May 2017). "After Brexit: the UK will need to renegotiate at least 759 treaties". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 31 May 2017. Retrieved 31 May 2017. "Through analysis of the EU treaty database, the FT found 759 separate EU bilateral agreements with potential relevance to Britain, covering trade in nuclear goods, customs, fisheries, trade, transport and regulatory co-operation in areas such as antitrust or financial services. This includes multilateral agreements based on consensus, where Britain must re-approach 132 separate parties. Around 110 separate opt-in accords at the UN and World Trade Organization are excluded from the estimates, as are narrow agreements on the environment, health, research and science. Some additional UK bilateral deals, outside the EU framework, may also need to be revised because they make reference to EU law. Some of the 759 are so essential that it would be unthinkable to operate without them. Air services agreements allow British aeroplanes to land in America, Canada or Israel; nuclear accords permit the trade in spare parts and fuel for Britain's power stations. Both these sectors are excluded from trade negotiations and must be addressed separately."

Giles, Chris (16 April 2017). "Brexit will damage UK standards of living, say economists". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 22 July 2019. Retrieved 22 November 2017. "Unlike the short-term effects of Brexit, which have been better than most had predicted, most economists say the ultimate impact of leaving the EU still appears likely to be more negative than positive. But the one thing almost all agree upon is that no one will know how big the effects are for some time."

"Brexit: Everyone Loses, but Britain Loses the Most". PIIE. 1 March 2019. Archived from the original on 27 March 2019. Retrieved 17 March 2019.

Crowley, Meredith; Exton, Oliver; Han, Lu (21 January 2019). "The impact of Brexit uncertainty on UK exports". VoxEU.org. Archived from the original on 8 July 2019. Retrieved 21 January 2019.

Soegaard, Christian. "Brexit has already hurt EU and non-EU exports by up to 13% – new research". The Conversation. Archived from the original on 5 November 2018. Retrieved 5 November 2018.

Douch, Mustapha; Edwards, T. Huw; Soegaard, Christian (2018). "The Trade Effects of the Brexit Announcement Shock". The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS). Archived from the original on 6 November 2018. Retrieved 5 November 2018.

Breinlich, Holger; Leromain, Elsa; Novy, Dennis; Sampson, Thomas (12 February 2019). "Voting with their money: Brexit and outward investment by UK firms". VoxEU.org. Archived from the original on 12 February 2019. Retrieved 13 February 2019.

"Brexit referendum spurs British companies into investing in EU". Reuters. 11 February 2019. Archived from the original on 13 February 2019. Retrieved 13 February 2019.

"The Government's Own Brexit Analysis Says The UK Will Be Worse Off in Every Scenario Outside The EU". BuzzFeed. Archived from the original on 29 January 2018. Retrieved 30 January 2018.

Parker, George (30 January 2018). "Secret data show Britain worse off under all Brexit scenarios". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 4 September 2019. Retrieved 30 January 2018.

Eichengreen, Barry (7 January 2019). "The international financial implications of Brexit". International Economics and Economic Policy. 16: 37–50. doi:10.1007/s10368-018-0422-x. ISSN 1612-4812. S2CID 159090073.

Armour, John (1 March 2017). "Brexit and financial settrvices". Oxford Review of Economic Policy. 33 (suppl_1): S54–S69. doi:10.1093/oxrep/grx014. ISSN 0266-903X.

Andrew Roberts (13 September 2016). "CANZUK: after Brexit, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain can unite as a pillar of Western civilisation". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 14 January 2019. Retrieved 3 September 2018.

Bennett, James C. (24 June 2016). "Brexit boosts 'CANZUK' replacement for European Union: Column". USA Today. Archived from the original on 25 July 2018. Retrieved 3 September 2018.

Krugman, Paul (10 July 2018). "Opinion | Brexit Meets Gravity". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 15 January 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2019.

"Long read: Can Brexit defy gravity? It is still much cheaper to trade with neighbouring countries". LSE BREXIT. 21 August 2018. Archived from the original on 15 January 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2019.

Sampson, Thomas; Dhingra, Swati; Ottaviano, Gianmarco; Reenen, John Van (2 June 2016). "How 'Economists for Brexit' manage to defy the laws of gravity". VoxEU.org. Archived from the original on 15 January 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2019.

Carter, Andrew; Swinney, Paul (2019). "Brexit and the Future of the UK's Unbalanced Economic Geography". The Political Quarterly. 90: 72–83. doi:10.1111/1467-923X.12649. ISSN 1467-923X. "What all of these studies agree on is that whichever Brexit deal is struck, even the most advantageous will have a negative impact on future economic growth for all places across the UK in the short to medium term. And they also agree that over the longer term its places that are already struggling that are likely to struggle the most, further exacerbating the country's unbalanced economic geography."

"FactCheck: What are the options for the Irish border after Brexit?". Channel4.com. 29 November 2017. Archived from the original on 14 September 2018. Retrieved 25 October 2018.

Lyons, Niamh (31 January 2017). "Brexit will not mean hard border, leaders vow". The Times, Ireland edition. Archived from the original on 31 January 2017. Retrieved 29 April 2017.

"Britain does not want return to Northern Ireland border controls, says May". The Irish Times. 26 July 2016. Archived from the original on 12 October 2016. Retrieved 12 October 2016.

Robertson, Nic (6 April 2018). "Brexit: the unexpected threat to peace in Northern Ireland". CNN. Archived from the original on 14 June 2018.

"George Mitchell: UK and Ireland need to realise what's at stake in Brexit talks". Belfast Telegraph. 8 April 2018. Archived from the original on 29 March 2019.

Smith, David (14 March 2018). "Brexit threatens Good Friday agreement, Irish PM warns". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 31 July 2018.

"Brexit: What are the backstop options?". BBC News. 13 September 2019. Archived from the original on 25 July 2018. Retrieved 24 July 2018.

"Brexit: What is in Boris Johnson's new deal with the EU?". BBC News. 21 October 2019. Retrieved 2 January 2020.

Parker, George; Brunsden, Jim (11 October 2019). "How Boris Johnson moved to break the Brexit deadlock". Financial Times. Retrieved 2 January 2020.

"Good Friday Agreement negotiators call for NI Protocol suspension". BBC News. 7 May 2021.

"Scotland Says New Vote on Independence Is 'Highly Likely'". The New York Times. 25 June 2016. Archived from the original on 16 February 2017. Retrieved 17 April 2017.

Simons, Ned (24 January 2016). "Nicola Sturgeon Denies She Has "Machiavellian" Wish For Brexit". The Huffington Post UK. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved 3 February 2016.

"Nicola Sturgeon says Scotland will pursue EU membership after independence". The Independent. 20 March 2017. Retrieved 20 March 2017.

Stewart, Heather (16 March 2017). "Theresa May rejects Nicola Sturgeon's referendum demand". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 31 May 2017. Retrieved 15 May 2017.

"Sturgeon: independent Scotland may need "phased" return to EU". The Guardian. 14 May 2017.

"Scotland, Wales and London want special Brexit deal if Northern Ireland gets one". Reuters. 4 December 2017. Archived from the original on 8 October 2019. Retrieved 8 October 2019.

"Brexit: What is the Northern Ireland Protocol and why are there checks?". BBC News. 15 March 2021. Retrieved 21 April 2021.

"Whitehall lawyers drawing up plans to challenge Continuity Bill in courts". Herald Scotland. 2018. Archived from the original on 3 April 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2018.

"Forging a new UK-wide agricultural framework post-Brexit". LSE. 2018. Archived from the original on 3 April 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2018.

"European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018". www.legislation.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 6 August 2019. Retrieved 6 August 2019.

"EU Continuity Bill was within competence of Scottish Parliament when it was passed". Holyrood Magazine. 13 December 2018. Archived from the original on 6 August 2019. Retrieved 6 August 2019.

"Brexit: Spain calls for joint control of Gibraltar". BBC News. Archived from the original on 26 June 2016. Retrieved 26 June 2016.

"UK, Spain reach Brexit deal over Gibraltar: Spanish PM". Digital Journal. 18 October 2018. Archived from the original on 28 March 2019. Retrieved 12 September 2019.

"Spanish PM lifts effective veto on Brexit deal after Gibraltar 'guarantee'". The Irish Times. 24 November 2018. Archived from the original on 25 November 2018.

"Calais migrants: UK and France sign new treaty". BBC News. 19 January 2018.

"EU-Austritt des UK: Diese Folgen hat der Brexit für Deutschland und die EU" [UK Exit from EU: Brexit has these consequences for Germany and the EU]. Merkur.de (in German). 22 August 2016. Archived from the original on 9 December 2016. Retrieved 30 November 2016. "Die Briten haben sich für einen Abschied entschieden, Europa wird nun anders aussehen. Der Kontinent verliert seine (neben Frankreich) stärkste Militärmacht samt Atomwaffenarsenal, seine zweitgrößte Volkswirtschaft, das Land mit der drittgrößten Bevölkerung, die Finanzhauptstadt der Welt und einen von zwei Plätzen im UN-Sicherheitsrat. [The British have decided to leave. Europe will now look different. The continent will be losing its strongest military power (alongside France), ... its second largest economy, the country with the third largest population, the financial capital of the world, and one of two seats on the UN Security Council.]"

Hendrik Kafsack (8 August 2016). "EU-Haushalt: Deutschland überweist das meiste Geld an Brüssel". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). Archived from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 9 October 2016.

"Brexit wird teuer für Deutschland". Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). Reuters/Deutsche Presse-Agentur. 10 September 2016. Archived from the original on 9 October 2016. Retrieved 9 October 2016.

"EIB President regrets Brexit and welcomes EU 27 united support for EIB Group". European Investment Bank. Retrieved 28 April 2021.

"EU member states avert €100bn Brexit 'disaster' for European Investment Bank". The Independent. 31 January 2020. Retrieved 28 April 2021.

Huhe, Narisong; Naurin, Daniel; Thomson, Robert (2020). "Don't cry for me Britannia: The resilience of the European Union to Brexit" (PDF). European Union Politics. 21: 1465116519882096. doi:10.1177/1465116519882096. hdl:10852/76151. ISSN 1465-1165. S2CID 211381583.

Gruyter, Caroline de. "There Is Life for the EU After Brexit". Carnegie Europe. Archived from the original on 5 December 2018.

"EMA now operating from Amsterdam" (Press release). European Medicines Agency. 11 March 2019. Archived from the original on 16 October 2019. Retrieved 3 February 2020.

"EMA gets keys to new HQ". The Pharma Letter. 18 November 2019. Archived from the original on 3 February 2020. Retrieved 3 February 2020.

"European bank regulator arrives in Paris in boost to Macron's financial vision for city". The Local. 5 June 2019. Archived from the original on 3 February 2020. Retrieved 3 February 2020.

Davis, Fergal; Finlay, Jonathan; Coe, Sarah (18 October 2019). "Farm payments in a no-deal Brexit". commonslibrary.parliament.uk. House of Commons Library. Archived from the original on 21 November 2021.

"Common Agricultural Policy". Institute for Government. 16 May 2017. Archived from the original on 6 September 2019.

Downing, Emma; Audickas, Lukas; Coe, Sarah (11 September 2018). "Brexit: UK agriculture policy". commonslibrary.parliament.uk (Research briefing). House of Commons Library. Archived from the original on 25 February 2021.

"Agriculture Act 2020".

Ares, Elena (30 October 2019). "Fisheries and Brexit" (PDF). researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk (Briefing paper). House of Commons Library. p. 4. Number 8396. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2021.

"Reality Check: How would Brexit affect the UK's fishing waters?". BBC News. 31 May 2016. Archived from the original on 1 October 2019.

"Common Fisheries Policy". Institute for Government. 17 February 2017. Archived from the original on 18 May 2019.

"Main world producers (2007)" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 12 August 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2018.

Daniel Boffey (15 February 2017). "UK fishermen may not win waters back after Brexit, EU memo reveals". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 2 July 2017. Retrieved 3 July 2017. "Source: House of Lords, NAFC Marine Centre, University of the Highlands and Islands."

"UK to withdraw from international fishing arrangement". BBC News. 2 July 2017. Archived from the original on 10 September 2019.

Mayhew, Ken (1 March 2017). "UK higher education and Brexit". Oxford Review of Economic Policy. 33 (suppl_1): S155–S161. doi:10.1093/oxrep/grx012. ISSN 0266-903X.

"It is likely that the UK would wish to remain an associated member of the European Research Area, like Norway and Iceland, in order to continue participating in the EU framework programmes."UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 (PDF). Paris: UNESCO Publishing. 2015. p. 269. ISBN 978-92-3-100129-1. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 June 2017. Retrieved 20 February 2017.

Elgot, Jessica; Elliott, Larry; Davis, Nicola (13 August 2016). "Treasury to guarantee post-Brexit funding for EU-backed projects". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 14 April 2017. Retrieved 14 April 2017.

McKee, Martin; Galsworthy, Mike; Stuckler, David; Jarman, Holly; Greer, Scott; Hervey, Tamara; Fahy, Nick (25 February 2019). "How will Brexit affect health services in the UK? An updated evaluation" (PDF). The Lancet. 393 (10174): 949–958. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(19)30425-8. ISSN 0140-6736. PMID 30819519. S2CID 72334219.

"Continuity of supplies". NHS England. Archived from the original on 12 December 2019.

Siddique, Haroon (12 June 2017). "96% drop in EU nurses registering to work in Britain since Brexit vote". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 2 April 2019. Retrieved 1 November 2017.

Baker, Carl (22 November 2022). "NHS staff from overseas: statistics". commonslibrary.parliament.uk.

"NHS Workforce Statistics – June 2022 (Including selected provisional statistics for July 2022)". NDRS. Retrieved 20 January 2023.

"Explanatory notes on the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018" (PDF). The Stationery Office. pp. 4, 8. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 September 2019.

Owen, Joe; Jack, Maddy Thimont; Iacobov, Adela; Christensen, Elliott (8 March 2019). "Managing migration after Brexit". Institute for Government. Archived from the original on 29 September 2019.

"The post-Brexit immigration plans at a glance". The Guardian. 19 December 2018. Archived from the original on 26 July 2019.

Wilkins, Hannah; Macdonald, Melissa; Johnston, Neil; Kennedy, Steven; Hubble, Susan; Powell, Tom (25 February 2020). "EU Settlement Scheme". commonslibrary.parliament.uk (Research briefing). House of Commons Library. Archived from the original on 8 June 2021.

"Future skills-based immigration system: executive summary". Home Office. 19 December 2018. Archived from the original on 29 September 2019.

Forte, Giuseppe; Portes, Jonathan (1 May 2017). Macroeconomic Determinants of International Migration to the UK (Report). Rochester, NY. SSRN 2979949.

Portes, Jonathan (1 November 2016). "Immigration after Brexit". National Institute Economic Review. 238 (1): R13–R21. doi:10.1177/002795011623800111. ISSN 0027-9501. S2CID 157228784.

"Brexit: What effect could leaving the European Union have on football transfers?". BBC Sport. 31 October 2018. Archived from the original on 12 January 2019. Retrieved 11 January 2019.

"How Brexit will affect Premier League football". Goal.com. 22 March 2019. Archived from the original on 12 January 2019. Retrieved 11 January 2019.

"Aviation and the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA)". Institute for Government. 10 September 2017. Archived from the original on 30 September 2019.

"Flights to and from the UK if there's no Brexit deal". Government of the United Kingdom. 24 September 2018. Archived from the original on 10 February 2019. Retrieved 9 February 2019.

"Getting to Europe Post Brexit – The Impact on Ferry Companies". Atc-logistics.ie. 23 April 2018. Archived from the original on 23 March 2019. Retrieved 22 September 2018.

"U.K. Starts Research on Brexit Customs System Due in Four Months". Bloomberg.com. 27 August 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2020.

"Why Brexit may be good for terrorists and the Kremlin and bad for European security". The Washington Post. 2018. Archived from the original on 15 January 2019.

Giles, Chris (1 July 2021). "Covid pandemic masks Brexit impact on UK economy". Financial Times. Retrieved 13 October 2021.

Giles, Chris (23 December 2021). "Brexit one year on: the impact on the UK economy". Financial Times. Retrieved 31 December 2021.

"The initial impact of Brexit on UK trade with the EU". Office for Budget Responsibility. 27 October 2021. Retrieved 15 January 2022.

"Brexit has been a 'factor' in fuel crisis, Grant Shapps admits". The Independent. 28 September 2021. Retrieved 6 October 2021.

"How serious is the shortage of lorry drivers?". BBC News. 14 July 2021. Archived from the original on 29 September 2021. Retrieved 1 October 2021.

Waterfield, Bruno (29 September 2021). "EU single market avoids supply problems". The Times. Archived from the original on 29 September 2021. Retrieved 30 September 2021.

"A Report on the Driver Shortage" (PDF). Road Haulage Association. July 2021. Archived (PDF) from the original on 31 May 2022. Retrieved 31 May 2022.

"UK warned visa plan to fix truck driver shortage will not solve crunch". Reuters. 26 September 2021.

"'Brexit made clear Eastern Europeans are not welcome in UK'". Deutsche Welle. 5 October 2021.

Total UK exports and imports (goods and services) by EU and non-EU, seasonally adjusted, current price – UK trade in numbers: Office for National Statistics

Jankowicz, Mia (20 March 2017). "Britain's thriving art scene strangled by Brexit chaos". Politics.co.uk. Archived from the original on 24 September 2018.

    Lech, K. (2020). "Claiming Their Voice: Foreign Memories on the Post-Brexit Stage". In Meerzon, Y.; Dean, D.; McNeil, D. (eds.). Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 215–234. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39915-3_12. ISBN 978-3-030-39914-6. S2CID 226721346.

Further reading

    Ansorg, N. & Haastrup, T.: "Brexit Beyond the UK's Borders: What It Means for Africa", GIGA Focus Afrika No. 03/2016

    Barnier, Michel (2021). My Secret Brexit Diary: A Glorious Illusion. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 978-1509550869.

    Carl, N., Dennison, J. & Evans, G.: "European but not European Enough: An Explanation for Brexit", European Union Politics Volume: 20 issue: 2, page(s): 282-304

    Clarke, Harold D.; Goodwin, Matthew; Whiteley, Paul (2017). Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1316605042.

    Clarke, John; Newman, Janet (2 January 2017). "'People in this country have had enough of experts': Brexit and the paradoxes of populism". Critical Policy Studies. 11 (1): 101–116. doi:10.1080/19460171.2017.1282376. ISSN 1946-0171. S2CID 152164548.

    Culkin, Nigel; Simmons, Richard (2018). Tales of Brexits Past and Present: Understanding the Choices, Threats and Opportunities In Our Separation from the EU. Bingley: Emerald Publishing. ISBN 978-1787694385.

    Evans, Geoffrey; Menon, Anand (2017). Brexit and British Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 978-1509523863.

    Freedland, Jonathan, "Fools Rush Out", The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 14 (26 September 2019), pp. 30, 32, 34–35.

    Freedman, Lawrence D. "Britain Adrift: The United Kingdom's Search for a Post-Brexit Role". Foreign Affairs (May/June 2020) 39#3 pp. 118–130.

    Hayton, Richard. "British conservatism after the vote for Brexit: The ideological legacy of David Cameron". British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20.1 (2018): 223–238. online

    Hobolt, Sara B. (2016). "The Brexit vote: a divided nation, a divided continent" (PDF). Journal of European Public Policy. 23 (9): 1259–1277. doi:10.1080/13501763.2016.1225785. ISSN 1350-1763. S2CID 158006844.

    Oliver, Tim (2018). Understanding Brexit: A concise introduction. Bristol: Policy Press. ISBN 978-1447346395.

    O'Rourke, Kevin (2019). A Short History of Brexit: From Brentry to Backstop. London: Pelican. ISBN 978-0241398272.

    O'Toole, Fintan (2018). Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain. London: Apollo. ISBN 978-1789540987.

    Outhwaite, William (ed.) Brexit: Sociological Responses. (London: Anthem Press, 2017). ISBN 978-1783086443

    Peers, Steve (2016). The Brexit: The Legal Framework for Withdrawal from the EU or Renegotiation of EU Membership. Oxford: Hart Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84946-874-9. OCLC 917161408.

    Rogers, Ivan (2019). 9 Lessons in Brexit. London: Short Books. ISBN 978-1780723990.

    Shaw, Martin (2022). Political Racism: Brexit and Its Aftermath. Agenda. ISBN 978-1-78821-508-4.

    Shipman, Tim. All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class (2016) excerpt

    Shipman, Tim. Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem (William Collins, 2018), on Brexit debates in 2017

External links

Brexit

at Wikipedia's sister projects

    Definitions from Wiktionary

    Media from Commons

    News from Wikinews

    Texts from Wikisource

    Resources from Wikiversity

    Data from Wikidata

    Early Parliamentary General Election Bill 2019–20, Progress in Parliament Archived 31 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine

    British government's Brexit information

    British government's official negotiation documents

    European Parliament – Brexit impact studies

    Brexit news on Eur-Lex website

    Legal Effect of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, Attorney General's advice to Prime Minister, 13 November 2018

    British government's Explainer (for the withdrawal agreement) 14 November 2018

    House of Lords report analysing the proposed Withdrawal Agreement, 5 December 2018

    EU's official negotiation documents

    British Parliament – Brexit News

    Reading list of post-EU Referendum publications by Parliament and the Devolved Assemblies – House of Commons Library

    Record of Brexit-related business in the devolved legislatures (Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) – House of Commons Library

    Gov.UK – Department for Exiting the European Union

    BBC: "Brexit: What are the options?" (10 October 2016)

    BBC: "Brexit vote: What could happen next?" (17 December 2018)

    The Brexit Papers, Bar Council, December 2016

    "Plan for Britain: The government's negotiating objectives for exiting the EU": PM's speech delivered and published on 17 January 2017 – transcript of speech as delivered at Lancaster House, London

    The United Kingdom's exit from and new partnership with the European Union, February 2017 ("White paper")

    Brexit at Curlie

    Quotes about Brexit Archived 14 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine on Euronews

    European Council Brexit Guidelines

    "The economic effects of the government's proposed Brexit deal" Archived 27 December 2020 at the Wayback Machine—National Institute of Economic and Social Research, November 2018

    How will Brexit affect the UK's manufacturing industry? UK Trade Policy Observatory, February 2018

    The real post-Brexit options Archived 19 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine Lecture by Ivan Rogers at the University of Glasgow, 23 May 2018

    "What are the options for the UK's trading relationship with the EU after Brexit?" Archived 22 October 2019 at the Wayback Machine UK in a Changing Europe, King's College London, December 2018

    "Brexit phrasebook: a guide to the talks' key terms"—The Guardian, 23 November 2018

    "Lord Ashcroft: How the United Kingdom voted on EU referendum day – and why" Conservative Home, 17 March 2019

    Explanatory Memorandum for the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2019 introduced by the Irish government in the legislature (Oireachtas)

    EU Council decision, 22 March 2019, extending the negotiating period

    Garrahan, Daniel (2022). The Brexit effect: how leaving the EU hit the UK. FT Film. Financial Times. Retrieved 25 October 2022.

    Constitutional implications of the Withdrawal Agreement legislation – House of Commons Library February 2020

Relating to court cases

    Judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union

    Judgment of the European Court of Justice in the Wightman case: Right of unilateral revocation of the notification

    Wilson v Prime Minister (2018) EWHC 3520 (Admin) Archived 16 January 2019 at the Wayback Machine

    Ewan McGaughey "Could Brexit be Void?" "King's Law Journal", Volume 29, 2018, Issue 3

    UK withdrawal from the European Union: Legal and procedural issues European Parliamentary Research Service, March 2017

    Ronan McCrea. "The legal issues of revoking the notification to leave the EU – but then notifying to leave again". London School of Economics, 20 December 2018

    vte

Brexit

    Renegotiation Referendum

        results Brexit negotiations Brexit withdrawal agreement

        NI protocol Trade negotiation Trade and Cooperation Agreement Windsor Framework Timeline

Referendum question

"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"

Referendum legislation

    European Union Referendum Act 2015

        Gibraltar European Union Referendum (Date of Referendum etc.) Regulations 2016 The European Union Referendum (Conduct) Regulations 2016

Background

Treaties

    Rome 1972 Accession Treaty Single European Act Maastricht Amsterdam Nice European Constitution Lisbon United Kingdom opt-outs from EU legislation

Legislation

    European Communities Act 1972

        Amendments: 1986 1993 1998 2002 2008 2011 European Economic Area Act 1993

Proposed bills

    European Union Bill 2004–05 European Communities Act 1972 (Repeal) Bills European Union (Referendum) Bill 2013–14

Elections

    2014 European Parliament election 2015 general election

By-elections

    2014 Clacton 2014 Heywood and Middleton 2014 Rochester and Strood

Other

    UK accession 1973 EC enlargement UK membership 1975 EC membership referendum UK rebate Bruges speech No. No. No. Black Wednesday EEA Maastricht Rebels UK Opt-outs The European Union: In or Out Bloomberg speech Russian interference 2015–16 renegotiation Euroscepticism in the UK

Campaign

    Issues Opinion polling Endorsements Project Fear Unlawful campaigning allegations Brexit: The Movie Pro-EU leaflet

Campaign

organisations

Remain

    Britain Stronger in Europe (official campaign) Labour In for Britain

Leave

    Vote Leave (official campaign) Leave.EU BeLeave Grassroots Out Labour Leave Campaign for an Independent Britain The Freedom Association

        Better Off Out Get Britain Out Bruges Group

Aftermath of

referendum

Political party

leadership elections

    Conservative

        2016 2019 Scottish, Feb 2020 Labour UKIP

Opposition to Brexit

    Proposed second referendum

        People's Vote Petition to revoke Article 50 Led By Donkeys Bollocks to Brexit

Elections

    2017 local 2017 general 2018 local 2019 local 2019 European Parliament

        Brexit Party 2019 general

By-elections

    2016 Witney 2016 Richmond Park 2016 Sleaford and North Hykeham 2017 Copeland 2017 Stoke-on-Trent Central 2019 Peterborough 2019 Brecon and Radnorshire

Other

    International reactions March to Leave Brexit Alliance Blue Collar Conservativism Brexit Party Independent Alliance for Reform

Brexit process

    Miller I case Invocation of Article 50 Negotiations

        Brexit divorce bill 2017 2018 2019 Withdrawal agreement

        Parliamentary votes No-deal Brexit

        Operation Yellowhammer Prorogation of Parliament

        Miller II / Cherry case Trade negotiation between the UK and the EU

        Fish for finance EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA)

Impact of Brexit

and

potential effects

on Northern Ireland and

the Republic of Ireland

    2024 Northern Ireland Executive formation Brexit and the Irish border Northern Ireland Protocol

        proposed changes Irish Sea border Windsor Framework

Other

    on Gibraltar on the EU Science and technology Economic effects Post-Brexit United Kingdom relations with the European Union

Brexit legislation

White papers

    Brexit plan Repeal Bill plan Chequers plan Brexit withdrawal agreement plan

Enacted

    Notification of Withdrawal Act 2017 Withdrawal Act 2018 (Gibraltar) Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018 Cooper–Letwin Act Benn Act Withdrawal Agreement Act 2020 (Gibraltar) Internal Market Act 2020 Future Relationship Act 2020 UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2020

Proposed

    Terms of Withdrawal from EU (Referendum) Bills UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Legal Continuity) (Scotland) Bill 2018 European Union Withdrawal Agreement (Public Vote) Bill 2017–19

Related

    Brexit 50p coin Change Britain Change UK Chaos with Ed Miliband European Research Group "Enemies of the People" Leave Means Leave Led By Donkeys More United Northern Future Forum The New European Open Britain Proposed second Scottish independence referendum Rue du Brexit Terminology (Glossary) Tufton Street United Ireland Voting pencil conspiracy theory Retained EU law

Media depictions

    Remainiacs (2017) Postcards from the 48% (2018) Not Tonight (2018) Brexit: The Uncivil War (2019) @BorderIrish (2018–2020)

    Category

Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata

National

    France BnF data Germany Israel United States Latvia Czech Republic

Europe

Article

Talk

Read

View source

View history

Tools

Page semi-protected

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the continent. For other uses, see Europe (disambiguation).

Europe

Show national borders

Hide national borders

Show all

Area 10,180,000 km2 (3,930,000 sq mi)[1] (6th)[a]

Population 745,173,774 (2021; 3rd)[2][3]

Population density 72.9/km2 (188/sq mi) (2nd)

GDP (PPP) $33.62 trillion (2022 est; 2nd)[4]

GDP (nominal) $24.02 trillion (2022 est; 3rd)[5]

GDP per capita $34,230 (2022 est; 3rd)[c][6]

HDI Increase 0.845[7]

Religions

Christianity (76.2%)[8]

No religion (18.3%)[8]

Islam (4.9%)[8]

Other (0.6%)[8]

Demonym European

Countries Sovereign (44–50)

De facto (2–5)

Dependencies External (5–6)

Internal (3)

Languages Most common:

RussianGermanEnglishFrenchItalianSpanishPolishUkrainianRomanianDutchSerbo-Croatian

Time zones UTC−1 to UTC+5

Largest cities Largest urban areas:

MoscowIstanbul[b]ParisLondonMadridEssen-DüsseldorfSaint PetersburgMilanBarcelonaBerlin[9]

UN M49 code 150 – Europe

001 – World

a. ^ Figures include only European portions of transcontinental countries.[n]

b. ^ Includes Asian population. Istanbul is a transcontinental city which straddles both Asia and Europe.

c. ^ "Europe" as defined by the International Monetary Fund.

Europe is a continent[t] located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa.[10][11] Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea, and the waterway of the Bosporus Strait.[12]

Europe covers about 10.18 million km2 (3.93 million sq mi), or 2% of Earth's surface (6.8% of land area), making it the second-smallest continent (using the seven-continent model). Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states, of which Russia is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 745 million (about 10% of the world population) in 2021; the third-largest after Asia and Africa.[2][3] The European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents, such as the Gulf Stream, which produce a temperate climate, tempering winters and summers, on much of the continent. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable producing more continental climates.

European culture consists of a range of national and regional cultures, which form the central roots of the wider Western civilisation, and together commonly reference ancient Greece and ancient Rome, particularly through their Christian successors, as crucial and shared roots.[13][14] Beginning with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE, Christian consolidation of Europe in the wake of the Migration Period marked the European post-classical Middle Ages. The Italian Renaissance, radiating from Florence, spread to the rest of the continent a new humanist interest in art and science which led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery, led by Spain and Portugal, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs with multiple explorations and conquests around the world. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers colonised at various times the Americas, almost all of Africa and Oceania, and the majority of Asia.

The Age of Enlightenment, the 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. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic, cultural and social change in Western Europe and eventually the wider world. Both world wars began and were fought to a great extent in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence and competed over dominance in Europe and globally.[15] The resulting Cold War divided Europe along the Iron Curtain, with NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East. This divide ended with the Revolutions of 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which allowed European integration to advance significantly.

European integration is being advanced institutionally since 1948 with the founding of the Council of Europe, and significantly through the realization of the European Union (EU), which represents today the majority of Europe.[16] The European Union is a supranational political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation and is based on a system of European treaties.[17] The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. A majority of its members have adopted a common currency, the euro, and participate in the European single market and a customs union. A large bloc of countries, the Schengen Area, have also abolished internal border and immigration controls. Regular popular elections take place every five years within the EU; they are considered to be the second-largest democratic elections in the world after India's. The EU is the third largest economy in the world.

Name

Further information: Europa (consort of Zeus)

Reconstruction of an early world map made by Anaximander of the 6th century BCE, deviding the known world into three large landmasses, one of which was named Europe.

The place name Evros was first used by the ancient Greeks to refer to their northernmost province, which bears the same name today. The principal river there – Evros (today's Maritsa) – flows through the fertile valleys of Thrace,[18] which it self was also called Europe, before the term meant the continent.[19]

In classical Greek mythology, Europa (Ancient Greek: Εὐρώπη, Eurṓpē) was a Phoenician princess. 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'.[20][21][22][23] Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it.[20] An alternative view is that of Robert Beekes, who has argued in favour of a Pre-Indo-European origin for the name, explaining that a derivation from eurus would yield a different toponym than Europa. Beekes has located toponyms related to that of Europa in the territory of ancient Greece, and localities such as that of Europos in ancient Macedonia.[24]

There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for west, this being either Akkadian erebu meaning 'to go down, set' (said of the sun) or Phoenician 'ereb 'evening, west',[25] which is at the origin of Arabic maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav. Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor",[26] while Beekes considers a connection to Semitic languages improbable.[24]

Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu (歐洲/欧洲), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name Ōuluóbā zhōu (歐羅巴洲) (zhōu means "continent"); a similar Chinese-derived term Ōshū (欧州) is also sometimes used in Japanese such as in the Japanese name of the European Union, Ōshū Rengō (欧州連合), despite the katakana Yōroppa (ヨーロッパ) being more commonly used. In some Turkic languages, the originally Persian name Frangistan ("land of the Franks") is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa.[27]

Definition

Further information: Boundaries between the continents § Asia and Europe

See also: List of transcontinental countries

Contemporary definition

Clickable map of Europe, showing one of the most commonly used continental boundaries[u]

Key: blue: states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia; green: countries not geographically in Europe, but closely associated with the continent

Alb.AndorraAustriaAzer.BelarusBelg.BosniaBulgariaChannel

Is.CroatiaCzech

Rep.DenmarkEstoniaFinlandFranceGib. (UK)GermanyGeorgiaGreeceHungaryIcelandIrelandItalyIoM

S. Mar.KazakhstanKos.LatviaLiech.LithuaniaLux.MaltaMoldovaMon.Mont.Nether.N. Mac.NorwaySvalbard (Nor)PolandPortugalRomaniaRussiaFranz Josef Land (Rus)SerbiaSlovakiaSlo.SpainSwedenSwitz-

erlandTurkeyUkraineUnited

KingdomFar. (Dk)Vat.ArmeniaCyprusGreenland (Dk)Adr-iaticSeaArctic OceanBaltic

SeaAegeanSeaBarents SeaBay of

BiscayBlack

SeaCaspian

SeaCeltic

SeaGreenland SeaBaffin BayGulf of

CádizLigurian

SeaMediterranean SeaNorth

Atlantic

OceanNorth

SeaNorwegian

SeaStrait of Gibraltar

The prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the east and north-east are usually taken to be the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the south-east, the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea, and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.[28]

Definitions used for the boundary between Asia and Europe in different periods of history.

A medieval T and O map printed by Günther Zainer in 1472, showing the three continents as domains of the sons of Noah – Asia to Sem (Shem), Europe to Iafeth (Japheth) and Africa to Cham (Ham)

Islands are generally grouped with the nearest continental landmass, hence Iceland is considered to be part of Europe, while the nearby island of Greenland is usually assigned to North America, although politically belonging to Denmark. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions based on sociopolitical and cultural differences. Cyprus is closest to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is considered part of Europe politically and it is a member state of the EU. Malta was considered an island of North-western Africa for centuries, but now it is considered to be part of Europe as well.[29] "Europe", as used specifically in British English, may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively.[30]

The term "continent" usually implies the physical geography of a large land mass completely or almost completely surrounded by water at its borders. 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. Cartographer Herman Moll suggested in 1715 Europe was bounded by a series of partly-joined waterways directed towards the Turkish straits, and the Irtysh River draining into the upper part of the Ob River and the Arctic Ocean. In contrast, the present eastern boundary of Europe partially adheres to the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, which is somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent compared to any clear-cut definition of the term "continent".

The current division of Eurasia into two continents now reflects East-West cultural, linguistic and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border between Europe and Asia does not follow any state boundaries and now only follows a few bodies of water. Turkey is generally considered a transcontinental country divided entirely by water, while Russia and Kazakhstan are only partly divided by waterways. France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain are also transcontinental (or more properly, intercontinental, when oceans or large seas are involved) in that their main land areas are in Europe while pockets of their territories are located on other continents separated from Europe by large bodies of water. Spain, for example, has territories south of the Mediterranean Sea—namely, Ceuta and Melilla—which are parts of Africa and share a border with Morocco. According to the current convention, Georgia and Azerbaijan are transcontinental countries where waterways have been completely replaced by mountains as the divide between continents.

History of the concept

See also: Boundary between Europe and Asia

Early history

Depiction of Europa regina ('Queen Europe') in 1582

The first recorded usage of Eurṓpē as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, in reference to the western shore of the Aegean Sea. As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BCE by Anaximander and Hecataeus. Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni River on the territory of Georgia) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE.[31] Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into three parts—Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa)—with the Nile and the Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia.[32] Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don.[33] 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.[34]

The convention received by the Middle Ages and surviving into modern usage is that of the Roman era used by Roman-era authors such as Posidonius,[35] Strabo[36] and Ptolemy,[37] who took the Tanais (the modern Don River) as the boundary.

The Roman Empire did not attach a strong identity to the concept of continental divisions. However, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the culture that developed in its place, linked to Latin and the Catholic church, began to associate itself with the concept of "Europe".[38] The term "Europe" is first used for a cultural sphere in the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century. From that time, the term designated the sphere of influence of the Western Church, as opposed to both the Eastern Orthodox churches and to the Islamic world.

A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam, and limited to northern Iberia, the British Isles, France, Christianised western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy.[39][40] The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance: Europa often[dubious – discuss] figures in the letters of Charlemagne's court scholar, Alcuin.[41] The transition of Europe to being a cultural term as well as a geographic one led to the borders of Europe being affected by cultural considerations in the East, especially relating to areas under Byzantine, Ottoman, and Russian influence. Such questions were affected by the positive connotations associated with the term Europe by its users. Such cultural considerations were not applied to the Americas, despite their conquest and settlement by European states. Instead, the concept of "Western civilization" emerged as a way of grouping together Europe and these colonies.[42]

Modern definitions

Further information: Regions of Europe and Continental Europe

A New Map of Europe According to the Newest Observations (1721) by Hermann Moll draws the eastern boundary of Europe along the Don River flowing south-west and the Tobol, Irtysh and Ob rivers flowing north.

1916 political map of Europe showing most of Moll's waterways replaced by von Strahlenberg's Ural Mountains and Freshfield's Caucasus Crest, land features of a type that normally defines a subcontinent

The question of defining a precise eastern boundary of Europe arises in the Early Modern period, as the eastern extension of Muscovy began to include North Asia. 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). But maps produced during the 16th to 18th centuries tended to differ in how to continue the boundary beyond the Don bend at Kalach-na-Donu (where it is closest to the Volga, now joined with it by the Volga–Don Canal), into territory not described in any detail by the ancient geographers.

Around 1715, Herman Moll produced a map showing the northern part of the Ob River and the Irtysh River, a major tributary of the Ob, 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. In 1721, he produced a more up to date map that was easier to read. However, his proposal to adhere to major rivers as the line of demarcation was never taken up by other geographers who were beginning to move away from the idea of water boundaries as the only legitimate divides between Europe and Asia.

Four years later, in 1725, Philip Johan von Strahlenberg was the first to depart from the classical Don boundary. He drew a new line along the Volga, following the Volga north until the Samara Bend, along Obshchy Syrt (the drainage divide between the Volga and Ural Rivers), then north and east along the latter waterway to its source in the Ural Mountains. At this point he proposed that mountain ranges could be included as boundaries between continents as alternatives to nearby waterways. Accordingly, he drew the new boundary north along Ural Mountains rather than the nearby and parallel running Ob and Irtysh rivers.[43] This was endorsed by the Russian Empire and introduced the convention that would eventually become commonly accepted. However, this did not come without criticism. Voltaire, writing in 1760 about Peter the Great's efforts to make Russia more European, ignored the whole boundary question with his claim that neither Russia, Scandinavia, northern Germany, nor Poland were fully part of Europe.[38] Since then, many modern analytical geographers like Halford Mackinder have declared that they see little validity in the Ural Mountains as a boundary between continents.[44]

The mapmakers continued to differ on the boundary between the lower Don and Samara well into the 19th century. The 1745 atlas published by the Russian Academy of Sciences has the boundary follow the Don beyond Kalach as far as Serafimovich before cutting north towards Arkhangelsk, while other 18th- to 19th-century mapmakers such as John Cary followed Strahlenberg's prescription. To the south, the Kuma–Manych Depression was identified c. 1773 by a German naturalist, Peter Simon Pallas, as a valley that once connected the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea,[45][46] and subsequently was proposed as a natural boundary between continents.

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 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".[47]

In Russia and the Soviet Union, the boundary along the Kuma–Manych Depression was the most commonly used as early as 1906.[48] In 1958, the Soviet Geographical Society formally recommended that the boundary between the Europe and Asia be drawn in textbooks from Baydaratskaya Bay, on the Kara Sea, along the eastern foot of Ural Mountains, then following the Ural River until the Mugodzhar Hills, and then the Emba River; and Kuma–Manych Depression,[49] thus placing the Caucasus entirely in Asia and the Urals entirely in Europe.[50] The Flora Europaea adopted a boundary along the Terek and Kuban rivers, so southwards from the Kuma and the Manych, but still with the Caucasus entirely in Asia.[51][52] However, most geographers in the Soviet Union favoured the boundary along the Caucasus crest,[53] and this became the common convention in the later 20th century, although the Kuma–Manych boundary remained in use in some 20th-century maps.

Some view the separation of Eurasia into Asia and Europe as a residue of Eurocentrism: "In physical, cultural and historical diversity, China and India are comparable to the entire European landmass, not to a single European country. [...]."[54]

History

Main article: History of Europe

Prehistory

Main article: Prehistoric Europe

Last Glacial Maximum refugia, c. 20,000 years ago

  Solutrean culture

  Epigravettian culture[55]

Paleolithic cave paintings from Lascaux in France (c. 15,000 BCE)

Stonehenge in the United Kingdom (Late Neolithic from 3000 to 2000 BCE)

During the 2.5 million years of the Pleistocene, numerous cold phases called glacials (Quaternary ice age), or significant advances of continental ice sheets, in Europe and North America, occurred at intervals of approximately 40,000 to 100,000 years. The long glacial periods were separated by more temperate and shorter interglacials which lasted about 10,000–15,000 years. The last cold episode of the last glacial period ended about 10,000 years ago.[56] Earth is currently in an interglacial period of the Quaternary, called the Holocene.[57]

Homo erectus georgicus, which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia, is the earliest hominin to have been discovered in Europe.[58] Other hominin remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca, Spain.[59] Neanderthal man (named after the Neandertal valley in Germany) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago (115,000 years ago it is found already in the territory of present-day Poland[60]) and disappeared from the fossil record about 40,000 years ago,[61] with their final refuge being the Iberian Peninsula. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans (Cro-Magnons), who appeared in Europe around 43,000 to 40,000 years ago.[62] Homo sapiens arrived in Europe around 54,000 years ago, some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.[63] The earliest sites in Europe dated 48,000 years ago are Riparo Mochi (Italy), Geissenklösterle (Germany) and Isturitz (France).[64][65]

The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and the widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BCE in Greece and the Balkans, probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East.[66] It spread from the Balkans along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine (Linear Pottery culture), and along the Mediterranean coast (Cardial culture). Between 4500 and 3000 BCE, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artifacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterised not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds and megalithic tombs.[67] The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic. During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as the Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge, were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe.[68][69]

The modern native populations of Europe largely descend from three distinct lineages:[70] Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, descended from populations associated with the Paleolithic Epigravettian culture;[55] Neolithic Early European Farmers who migrated from Anatolia during the Neolithic Revolution 9,000 years ago;[71] and Yamnaya Steppe herders who expanded into Europe from the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Ukraine and southern Russia in the context of Indo-European migrations 5,000 years ago.[70][72] The European Bronze Age began c. 3200 BCE in Greece with the Minoan civilisation on Crete, the first advanced civilisation in Europe.[73] The Minoans were followed by the Myceneans, who collapsed suddenly around 1200 BCE, ushering the European Iron Age.[74] Iron Age colonisation by the Greeks and Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BCE gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity, whose beginning is sometimes dated to 776 BCE, the year of the first Olympic Games.[75]

Classical antiquity

Main article: Classical antiquity

See also: Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome

The Parthenon in Athens (432 BCE)

Ancient Greece was the founding culture of Western civilisation. Western democratic and rationalist culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece.[76] The Greek city-state, the polis, was the fundamental political unit of classical Greece.[76] In 508 BCE, Cleisthenes instituted the world's first democratic system of government in Athens.[77] The Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy, humanism and rationalism under Aristotle, Socrates and Plato; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with the epic poems of Homer;[78] in drama with Sophocles and Euripides; in medicine with Hippocrates and Galen; and in science with Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes.[79][80][81] In the course of the 5th century BCE, 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,[82] 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.

Animation showing the growth and division of Ancient Rome (years CE)

Greece was followed by Rome, which left its mark on law, politics, language, engineering, architecture, government and many more key aspects in western civilisation.[76] By 200 BCE, Rome had conquered Italy and over the following two centuries it conquered Greece and Hispania (Spain and Portugal), the North African coast, much of the Middle East, Gaul (France and Belgium) and Britannia (England and Wales).

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. The Roman Republic ended in 27 BCE, when Augustus proclaimed the Roman Empire. The two centuries that followed are known as the pax romana, a period of unprecedented peace, prosperity and political stability in most of Europe.[83] 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.[84][85] Christianity was legalised by Constantine I in 313 CE after three centuries of imperial persecution. Constantine also permanently moved the capital of the empire from Rome to the city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul) which was renamed Constantinople in his honour in 330 CE. Christianity became the sole official religion of the empire in 380 CE and in 391–392 CE, the emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan religions.[86] This is sometimes considered to mark the end of antiquity; alternatively antiquity is considered to end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 CE; the closure of the pagan Platonic Academy of Athens in 529 CE;[87] or the rise of Islam in the early 7th century CE. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful economic, cultural, and military forces in Europe.[88]

Early Middle Ages

Main articles: Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages

See also: Dark Ages and Age of Migrations

Europe c. 650

Charlemagne's empire in 814:      Francia,      Tributaries

During the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the "Age of Migrations". There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Slavs, Avars, Bulgars and, later on, the Vikings, Pechenegs, Cumans and Magyars.[83] Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as the "Dark Ages".[89]

Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this very few written records survive and much literature, philosophy, mathematics and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Western Europe, though they were preserved in the east, in the Byzantine Empire.[90]

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. During most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the most powerful economic, cultural and military force in Europe. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code that forms the basis of many modern legal systems, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control.[91]

From the 7th century onwards, as the Byzantines and neighbouring Sasanid Persians were severely weakened due to the protracted, centuries-lasting and frequent Byzantine–Sasanian wars, the Muslim Arabs began to make inroads into historically Roman territory, taking the Levant and North Africa and making inroads into Asia Minor. In the mid-7th century, following the Muslim conquest of Persia, Islam penetrated into the Caucasus region.[92] Over the next centuries Muslim forces took Cyprus, Malta, Crete, Sicily and parts of southern Italy.[93] 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 north-west (Asturias) and largely Basque regions in the Pyrenees. This territory, under the Arabic name Al-Andalus, became part of the expanding Umayyad Caliphate. The unsuccessful second siege of Constantinople (717) weakened the Umayyad dynasty and reduced their prestige. The Umayyads were then defeated by the Frankish leader Charles Martel at the Battle of Poitiers in 732, which ended their northward advance. In the remote regions of north-western Iberia and the middle Pyrenees the power of the Muslims in the south was scarcely felt. It was here that the foundations of the Christian kingdoms of Asturias, Leon and Galicia were laid and from where the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula would start. However, no coordinated attempt would be made to drive the Moors out. The Christian kingdoms were mainly focused on their own internal power struggles. 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.

Viking raids and division of the Frankish Empire at the Treaty of Verdun in 843

During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe, respectively.[94] Eventually the Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I.[95] Charlemagne, a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed "Holy Roman Emperor" by the Pope in 800. This led in 962 to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe.[96]

East Central Europe saw the creation of the first Slavic states and the adoption of Christianity (c. 1000 CE). The powerful West Slavic state of Great Moravia spread its territory all the way south to the Balkans, reaching its largest territorial extent under Svatopluk I and causing a series of armed conflicts with East Francia. Further south, the first South Slavic states emerged in the late 7th and 8th century and adopted Christianity: the First Bulgarian Empire, the Serbian Principality (later Kingdom and Empire) and the Duchy of Croatia (later Kingdom of Croatia). To the East, Kievan Rus' expanded from its capital in Kiev to become the largest state in Europe by the 10th century. In 988, Vladimir the Great adopted Orthodox Christianity as the religion of state.[97][98] Further East, Volga Bulgaria became an Islamic state in the 10th century, but was eventually absorbed into Russia several centuries later.[99]

High and Late Middle Ages

Main articles: High Middle Ages, Late Middle Ages, and Middle Ages

See also: Medieval demography

The maritime republics of medieval Italy reestablished contacts between Europe, Asia and Africa with extensive trade networks and colonies across the Mediterranean, and had an essential role in the Crusades.[100][101]

The period between the year 1000 and 1250 is known as the High Middle Ages, followed by the Late Middle Ages until c. 1500.

During the High Middle Ages the population of Europe experienced significant growth, culminating in the Renaissance of the 12th century. Economic growth, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible the development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas. The growing wealth and independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene.

The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in the Early Middle Ages, and soon spread throughout Europe.[102] A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of the Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament.[103] The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church. Through monasteries and cathedral schools, the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe.[102]

Tancred of Sicily and Philip II of France, during the Third Crusade (1189–1192)

The Papacy reached the height of its power during the High Middle Ages. An East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land.[104] In Europe itself, the Church organised the Inquisition against heretics. In the Iberian Peninsula, the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492, ending over seven centuries of Islamic rule in the south-western peninsula.[105]

In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans. Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city in Europe from the 9th to the 12th centuries, with a population of approximately 400,000.[106] The Empire was weakened following the defeat at Manzikert, and was weakened considerably by the sack of Constantinople in 1204, during the Fourth Crusade.[107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114][115] Although it would recover Constantinople in 1261, Byzantium fell in 1453 when Constantinople was taken by the Ottoman Empire.[116][117][118]

The sacking of Suzdal by Batu Khan in 1238, during the Mongol invasion of Europe (1220s–1240s)

In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Pechenegs and the Cuman-Kipchaks, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, and temporarily halted the expansion of the Rus' state to the south and east.[119] Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongols.[120] The invaders, who became known as Tatars, were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. They established the state of the Golden Horde with headquarters in Crimea, which later adopted Islam as a religion, and ruled over modern-day southern and central Russia for more than three centuries.[121][122] After the collapse of Mongol dominions, the first Romanian states (principalities) emerged in the 14th century: Moldavia and Walachia. Previously, these territories were under the successive control of Pechenegs and Cumans.[123] 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. The state was consolidated under Ivan III the Great and Ivan the Terrible, steadily expanding to the east and south over the next centuries.

The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages.[124] The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half.[125][126] Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines,[127] and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period.[128] Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of the European population at the time.[129]

The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in The Decameron (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews, beggars and lepers.[130] The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the 18th century.[131] During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe.[132]

Early modern period

Main article: Early modern period

See also: Renaissance, Reformation, Scientific Revolution, and Age of Discovery

The School of Athens by Raphael (1511): Contemporaries, such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci (centre), are portrayed as classical scholars of the Renaissance.

The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence, and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries, often translated from Arabic into Latin.[133][134][135] The Renaissance spread across Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries: it saw the flowering of art, philosophy, music, and the sciences, under the joint patronage of royalty, the nobility, the Roman Catholic Church and an emerging merchant class.[136][137][138] 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.[139][140]

Political intrigue within the Church in the mid-14th century caused the Western Schism. During this forty-year period, two popes—one in Avignon and one in Rome—claimed rulership over the Church. Although the schism was eventually healed in 1417, the papacy's spiritual authority had suffered greatly.[141] In the 15th century, Europe started to extend itself beyond its geographic frontiers. Spain and Portugal, the greatest naval powers of the time, took the lead in exploring the world.[142][143] Exploration reached the Southern Hemisphere in the Atlantic and the Southern tip of Africa. Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492, and Vasco da Gama opened the ocean route to the East linking the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in 1498. The Portuguese-born explorer Ferdinand Magellan reached Asia westward across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans in a Spanish expedition, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the globe, completed by the Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano (1519–1522). Soon after, the Spanish and Portuguese began establishing large global empires in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania.[144] France, the Netherlands and England soon followed in building large colonial empires with vast holdings in Africa, the Americas and Asia. In 1588, a Spanish armada failed to invade England. A year later England tried unsuccessfully to invade Spain, allowing Philip II of Spain to maintain his dominant war capacity in Europe. This English disaster also allowed the Spanish fleet to retain its capability to wage war for the next decades. However, two more Spanish armadas failed to invade England (2nd Spanish Armada and 3rd Spanish Armada).[145][146][147][148]

Habsburg dominions in the centuries following their partition by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. The principal military base of Philip II in Europe was the Spanish road stretching from the Netherlands to the Duchy of Milan.[149]

The Church's power was further weakened by the Protestant Reformation in 1517 when German theologian Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses criticising the selling of indulgences to the church door. He was subsequently excommunicated in the papal bull Exsurge Domine in 1520 and his followers were condemned in the 1521 Diet of Worms, which divided German princes between Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths.[150] Religious fighting and warfare spread with Protestantism.[151] The plunder of the empires of the Americas allowed Spain to finance religious persecution in Europe for over a century.[152] 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.[153] In the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, France rose to predominance within Europe.[154] The defeat of the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 marked the historic end of Ottoman expansion into Europe.[155]

The 17th century in Central and parts of Eastern Europe was a period of general decline;[156] the region experienced more than 150 famines in a 200-year period between 1501 and 1700.[157] From the Union of Krewo (1385) east-central Europe was dominated by the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The hegemony of the vast Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had ended with the devastation brought by the Second Northern War (Deluge) and subsequent conflicts;[158] the state itself was partitioned and ceased to exist at the end of the 18th century.[159]

From the 15th to 18th centuries, when the disintegrating khanates of the Golden Horde were conquered by Russia, Tatars from the Crimean Khanate frequently raided Eastern Slavic lands to capture slaves.[160] Further east, the Nogai Horde and Kazakh Khanate frequently raided the Slavic-speaking areas of contemporary Russia and Ukraine for hundreds of years, until the Russian expansion and conquest of most of northern Eurasia (i.e. Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Siberia).

The Renaissance and the New Monarchs marked the start of an Age of Discovery, a period of exploration, invention and scientific development.[161] Among the great figures of the Western scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries were Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Isaac Newton.[162] 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."[133]

18th and 19th centuries

Main article: Modern history

See also: Industrial Revolution, French Revolution, and Age of Enlightenment

The national boundaries within Europe set by the Congress of Vienna

The Seven Years' War brought to an end the "Old System" of alliances in Europe. Consequently, when the American Revolutionary War turned into a global war between 1778 and 1783, Britain found itself opposed by a strong coalition of European powers, and lacking any substantial ally.[163]

The Age of Enlightenment was a powerful intellectual movement during the 18th century promoting scientific and reason-based thoughts.[164][165][166] 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.[167] Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in the aftermath of the French Revolution, and established the First French Empire that, during the Napoleonic Wars, grew to encompass large parts of Europe before collapsing in 1815 with the Battle of Waterloo.[168][169] 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.[170][171][172] The Congress of Vienna, convened after Napoleon's downfall, established a new balance of power in Europe centred on the five "Great Powers": the UK, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia.[173] This balance would remain in place until the Revolutions of 1848, during which liberal uprisings affected all of Europe except for Russia and the UK. These revolutions were eventually put down by conservative elements and few reforms resulted.[174] The year 1859 saw the unification of Romania, as a nation state, from smaller principalities. In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian empire was formed; 1871 saw the unifications of both Italy and Germany as nation-states from smaller principalities.[175]

In parallel, the Eastern Question grew more complex ever since the Ottoman defeat in the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774). As the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire seemed imminent, the Great Powers struggled to safeguard their strategic and commercial interests in the Ottoman domains. The Russian Empire stood to benefit from the decline, whereas the Habsburg Empire and Britain perceived the preservation of the Ottoman Empire to be in their best interests. 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.[176] Formal recognition of the de facto independent principalities of Montenegro, Serbia and Romania ensued at the Congress of Berlin in 1878.

Marshall's Temple Works (1840); the Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain.

The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain in the last part of the 18th century and spread throughout Europe. The invention and implementation of new technologies resulted in rapid urban growth, mass employment and the rise of a new working class.[177] Reforms in social and economic spheres followed, including the first laws on child labour, the legalisation of trade unions,[178] and the abolition of slavery.[179] In Britain, the Public Health Act of 1875 was passed, which significantly improved living conditions in many British cities.[180] Europe's population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900.[181] The last major famine recorded in Western Europe, the Great Famine of Ireland, caused death and mass emigration of millions of Irish people.[182] In the 19th century, 70 million people left Europe in migrations to various European colonies abroad and to the United States.[183] The industrial revolution also led to large population growth, and the share of the world population living in Europe reached a peak of slightly above 25% around the year 1913.[184][185]

20th century to the present

Main articles: Modern era and History of Europe

See also: World War I, Great Depression, Interwar period, Second World War, Cold War, and History of the European Union

Map of European colonial empires throughout the world in 1914

Two world wars and an economic depression dominated the first half of the 20th century. The First World War was fought between 1914 and 1918. It started when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by the Yugoslav nationalist[186] Gavrilo Princip.[187] Most European nations were drawn into the war, which was fought between the Entente Powers (France, Belgium, Serbia, Portugal, Russia, the United Kingdom, and later Italy, Greece, Romania, and the United States) and the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire). The war left more than 16 million civilians and military dead.[188] Over 60 million European soldiers were mobilised from 1914 to 1918.[189]

Map depicting the military alliances of the First World War in 1914–1918

Russia was plunged into the Russian Revolution, which threw down the Tsarist monarchy and replaced it with the communist Soviet Union,[190] leading also to the independence of many former Russian governorates, such as Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, as new European countries.[191] Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire collapsed and broke up into separate nations, and many other nations had their borders redrawn. The Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended the First World War in 1919, was harsh towards Germany, upon whom it placed full responsibility for the war and imposed heavy sanctions.[192] Excess deaths in Russia over the course of the First World War and the Russian Civil War (including the postwar famine) amounted to a combined total of 18 million.[193] 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;[194] surviving kulaks were persecuted and many sent to Gulags to do forced labour. Stalin was also responsible for the Great Purge of 1937–38 in which the NKVD executed 681,692 people;[195] millions of people were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.[196]

Serbian war efforts (1914–1918) cost the country one quarter of its population.[197][198][199][200][201]

Nazi Germany began the devastating Second World War in Europe by its leader, Adolf Hitler. Here Hitler, on the right, with his closest ally, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, in 1940.

The social revolutions sweeping through Russia also affected other European nations following The Great War: in 1919, with the Weimar Republic in Germany and the First Austrian Republic; in 1922, with Mussolini's one-party fascist government in the Kingdom of Italy and in Atatürk's Turkish Republic, adopting the Western alphabet and state secularism. Economic instability, caused in part by debts incurred in the First World War and 'loans' to Germany played havoc in Europe in the late 1920s and 1930s. This, and the Wall Street Crash of 1929, brought about the worldwide Great Depression. 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.[202][203]

In 1933, Hitler became the leader of Germany and began to work towards his goal of building Greater Germany. Germany re-expanded and took back the Saarland and Rhineland in 1935 and 1936. In 1938, Austria became a part of Germany following the Anschluss. 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. At the time, the United Kingdom and France preferred a policy of appeasement.

With tensions mounting between Germany and Poland over the future of Danzig, the Germans turned to the Soviets and signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which allowed the Soviets to invade the Baltic states and parts of Poland and Romania. 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 the Second World War.[204][205][206] The Soviet invasion of Poland started on 17 September and Poland fell soon thereafter. On 24 September, the Soviet Union attacked the Baltic countries and, on 30 November, Finland, the latter of which was followed by the devastating Winter War for the Red Army.[207] The British hoped to land at Narvik and send troops to aid Finland, but their primary objective in the landing was to encircle Germany and cut the Germans off from Scandinavian resources. Around the same time, Germany moved troops into Denmark. The Phoney War continued.

In May 1940, Germany attacked France through the Low Countries. France capitulated in June 1940. By August, Germany had begun a bombing offensive against the United Kingdom but failed to convince the Britons to give up.[208] In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.[209] On 7 December 1941 Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the conflict as allies of the British Empire, and other allied forces.[210][211]

The "Big Three" at the Yalta Conference in 1945; seated (from the left): Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin

After the staggering Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the German offensive in the Soviet Union turned into a continual fallback. The Battle of Kursk, which involved the largest tank battle in history, was the last major German offensive on the Eastern Front. In June 1944, British and American forces invaded France in the D-Day landings, opening a new front against Germany. Berlin finally fell in 1945, ending the Second World War in Europe. The war was the largest and most destructive in human history, with 60 million dead across the world.[212] More than 40 million people in Europe had died as a result of the Second World War,[213] including between 11 and 17 million people who perished during the Holocaust.[214] The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people (mostly civilians) during the war, about half of all Second World War casualties.[215] By the end of the Second World War, Europe had more than 40 million refugees.[216][217][218] Several post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe displaced a total of about 20 million people.[219]

The First World War, and especially the Second World War, diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs. After the Second World War 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". The United States and Western Europe established the NATO alliance and, later, the Soviet Union and Central Europe established the Warsaw Pact.[220] Particular hot spots after the Second World War were Berlin and Trieste, whereby the Free Territory of Trieste, founded in 1947 with the UN, was dissolved in 1954 and 1975, respectively. The Berlin blockade in 1948 and 1949 and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were one of the great international crises of the Cold War.[221][222][223]

The two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, became locked in a fifty-year-long Cold War, centred on nuclear proliferation. At the same time decolonisation, which had already started after the First World War, gradually resulted in the independence of most of the European colonies in Asia and Africa.[15]

Flag of Europe, adopted by the Council of Europe in 1955 as the flag for the whole of Europe[224]

In the 1980s the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Solidarity movement in Poland weakened the previously rigid communist system. The opening of the Iron Curtain at the Pan-European Picnic then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which the Eastern bloc, the Warsaw Pact and other communist states collapsed, and the Cold War ended.[225][226][227] Germany was reunited, after the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the maps of Central and Eastern Europe were redrawn once more.[228] This made old previously interrupted cultural and economic relationships possible, and previously isolated cities such as Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest and Trieste were now again in the centre of Europe.[202][229][230][231]

European integration also grew after the Second World War. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the idea of unifying Europe[16] to achieve common goals. It includes all European states except for Belarus, Russia,[232] and Vatican City. 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.[233] In 1967 the EEC, European Coal and Steel Community, and Euratom formed the European Community, which in 1993 became the European Union. The EU established a parliament, court and central bank, and introduced the euro as a unified currency.[234] Between 2004 and 2013, more Central European countries began joining, expanding the EU to 28 European countries and once more making Europe a major economical and political centre of power.[235] However, the United Kingdom withdrew from the EU on 31 January 2020, as a result of a June 2016 referendum on EU membership.[236] The Russo-Ukrainian conflict, which has been ongoing since 2014, steeply escalated when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, marking the largest humanitarian and refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War[237] and the Yugoslav Wars.[238]

Geography

Main article: Geography of Europe

Map of populous Europe and surrounding regions showing physical, political and population characteristics, as per 2018

Europe makes up the western fifth of the Eurasian landmass.[28] It has a higher ratio of coast to landmass than any other continent or subcontinent.[239] Its maritime borders consist of the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas to the south.[240] Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. 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. This extended lowland is known as the Great European Plain and at its heart lies the North German Plain. 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.

This description is simplified. Subregions such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Peninsula contain their own complex features, as does mainland Central Europe itself, where the relief contains many plateaus, river valleys and basins that complicate the general trend. Sub-regions like Iceland, Britain and Ireland are special cases. The former is a land unto itself in the northern ocean that is counted as part of Europe, while the latter are upland areas that were once joined to the mainland until rising sea levels cut them off.

Climate

Main article: Climate of Europe

Biomes of Europe and surrounding regions:

     tundra      alpine tundra      taiga      montane forest

     temperate broadleaf forest      mediterranean forest      temperate steppe      dry steppe

Europe lies mainly in the temperate climate zone of the northern hemisphere, where the prevailing wind direction is from the west. The climate is milder in comparison to other areas of the same latitude around the globe due to the influence of the Gulf Stream, an ocean current which carries warm water from the Gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic ocean to Europe.[241] The Gulf Stream is nicknamed "Europe's central heating", because it makes Europe's climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be. 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.

Therefore, the average temperature throughout the year of Aveiro is 16 °C (61 °F), while it is only 13 °C (55 °F) in New York City which is almost on the same latitude, bordering the same ocean. Berlin, Germany; Calgary, Canada; and Irkutsk, in far south-eastern Russia, lie on around the same latitude; January temperatures in Berlin average around 8 °C (14 °F) higher than those in Calgary and they are almost 22 °C (40 °F) higher than average temperatures in Irkutsk.[241]

The large water masses of the Mediterranean Sea, which equalise the temperatures on an annual and daily average, are also of particular importance. The water of the Mediterranean extends from the Sahara desert to the Alpine arc in its northernmost part of the Adriatic Sea near Trieste.[242]

In general, Europe is not just colder towards the north compared to the south, but it also gets colder from the west towards the east. The climate is more oceanic in the west and less so in the east. This can be illustrated by the following table of average temperatures at locations roughly following the 64th, 60th, 55th, 50th, 45th and 40th latitudes. None of them is located at high altitude; most of them are close to the sea.

Köppen-Geiger climate classification map for Europe[243]

Temperatures in °C

Location Latitude Longitude Coldest

month Hottest

month Annual

average

Reykjavík 64 N 22 W 0.1 11.2 4.7

Umeå 64 N 20 E −6.2 16.0 3.9

Oulu 65 N 25.5 E −9.6 16.5 2.7

Arkhangelsk 64.5 N 40.5 E −12.7 16.3 1.3

Lerwick 60 N 1 W 3.5 12.4 7.4

Stockholm 59.5 N 19 E −1.7 18.4 7.4

Helsinki 60 N 25 E −4.7 17.8 5.9

Saint Petersburg 60 N 30 E −5.8 18.8 5.8

Edinburgh 55.5 N 3 W 4.2 15.3 9.3

Copenhagen 55.5 N 12 E 1.4 18.1 9.1

Klaipėda 55.5 N 21 E −1.3 17.9 8.0

Moscow 55.5 N 30 E −6.5 19.2 5.8

Isles of Scilly 50 N 6 W 7.9 16.9 11.8

Brussels 50.5 N 4 E 3.3 18.4 10.5

Kraków 50 N 20 E −2.0 19.2 8.7

Kyiv 50.5 N 30 E −3.5 20.5 8.4

Bordeaux 45 N 0 6.6 21.4 13.8

Venice 45.5 N 12 E 3.3 23.0 13.0

Belgrade 45 N 20 E 1.4 23.0 12.5

Astrakhan 46 N 48 E −3.7 25.6 10.5

Coimbra 40 N 8 W 9.9 21.9 16.0

Valencia 39.5 N 0 11.9 26.1 18.3

Naples 40.5 N 14 E 8.7 24.9 15.9

Istanbul 41 N 29 E 5.5 23.4 13.9

[244] It is notable how the average temperatures for the coldest month, as well as the annual average temperatures, drop from the west to the east. For instance, Edinburgh is warmer than Belgrade during the coldest month of the year, although Belgrade is around 10° of latitude farther south.

Climate change

This section is an excerpt from Climate change in Europe.[edit]

Increase of average yearly temperature in selected cities in Europe (1900–2017)[245]

Climate change has resulted in an increase in temperature of 2.3 °C (2022) in Europe compared to pre-industrial levels. Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world.[246] Europe's climate is getting warmer due to anthropogenic activity. According to international climate experts, global temperature rise should not exceed 2 °C to prevent the most dangerous consequences of climate change; without reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, this could happen before 2050.[247][248] Climate change has implications for all regions of Europe, with the extent and nature of impacts varying across the continent. Impacts on European countries include warmer weather and increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather such as heat waves, bringing health risks and impacts on ecosystems. European countries are major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, although the European Union and governments of several countries have outlined plans to implement climate change mitigation and an energy transition in the 21st century, the European Green Deal being one of these. The European Union commissioner of climate action is Frans Timmermans since 1 December 2019.[249]

Geology

Main articles: Geology of Europe and Geological history of Europe

Surficial geology of Europe

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. 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. Around 440 million years ago Euramerica was formed from Baltica and Laurentia; a further joining with Gondwana then leading to the formation of Pangea. Around 190 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurasia split apart due to the widening of the Atlantic Ocean. Finally and very soon afterwards, Laurasia itself split up again, into Laurentia (North America) and the Eurasian continent. The land connection between the two persisted for a considerable time, via Greenland, leading to interchange of animal species. From around 50 million years ago, rising and falling sea levels have determined the actual shape of Europe and its connections with continents such as Asia. Europe's present shape dates to the late Tertiary period about five million years ago.[250]

The geology of Europe is hugely varied and complex and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary.[251] Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and Alps/Carpathians. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea complex and Barents Sea.

The northern plain contains the old geological continent of Baltica and so may be regarded geologically as the "main continent", while peripheral highlands and mountainous regions in the south and west constitute fragments from various other geological continents. Most of the older geology of western Europe existed as part of the ancient microcontinent Avalonia.

Flora

Land use map of Europe with arable farmland (yellow), forest (dark green), pasture (light green) and tundra, or bogs, in the north (dark yellow)

Having lived side by side with agricultural peoples for millennia, Europe's animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of humans. With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for various national parks.

The main natural vegetation cover in Europe is mixed forest. The conditions for growth are very favourable. In the north, the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift warm the continent. Southern Europe has a warm but mild climate. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. Mountain ridges also affect the conditions. Some of these, such as the Alps and the Pyrenees, are oriented east–west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the ocean in the interior. Others are oriented south–north (Scandinavian Mountains, Dinarides, Carpathians, Apennines) and because the rain falls primarily on the side of mountains that is oriented towards the sea, forests grow well on this side, while on the other side, the conditions are much less favourable. Few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some point in time, and the cutting down of the preagricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the original plant and animal ecosystems.

Floristic regions of Europe and neighbouring areas, according to Wolfgang Frey and Rainer Lösch

Possibly 80 to 90 percent of Europe was once covered by forest.[252] It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea 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. During recent times, deforestation has been slowed and many trees have been planted. However, in many cases monoculture plantations of conifers have replaced the original mixed natural forest, because these grow quicker. The plantations now cover vast areas of land, but offer poorer habitats for many European forest dwelling species which require a mixture of tree species and diverse forest structure. The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2–3% or less, while in its Western Russia its 5–10%. The European country with the smallest percentage of forested area is Iceland (1%), while the most forested country is Finland (77%).[253]

In temperate Europe, mixed forest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate. The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak. In the north, the taiga is a mixed spruce–pine–birch forest; further north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia, the taiga gives way to tundra as the Arctic is approached. In the Mediterranean, many olive trees have been planted, which are very well adapted to its arid climate; Mediterranean Cypress is also widely planted in southern Europe. The semi-arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest. 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.

Fauna

Main article: Fauna of Europe

Biogeographic regions of Europe and bordering regions

Glaciation during the most recent ice age and the presence of humans affected the distribution of European fauna. As for the animals, in many parts of Europe most large animals and top predator species have been hunted to extinction. The woolly mammoth was extinct before the end of the Neolithic period. Today wolves (carnivores) and bears (omnivores) are endangered. Once they were found in most parts of Europe. However, deforestation and hunting caused these animals to withdraw further and further. By the Middle Ages the bears' habitats were limited to more or less inaccessible mountains with sufficient forest cover. Today, the brown bear lives primarily in the Balkan peninsula, Scandinavia and Russia; a small number also persist in other countries across Europe (Austria, Pyrenees etc.), but in these areas brown bear populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat. In addition, polar bears may be found on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago far north of Scandinavia. The wolf, the second-largest predator in Europe after the brown bear, can be found primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in pockets of Western Europe (Scandinavia, Spain, etc.).

Once roaming the great temperate forests of Eurasia, European bison now live in nature preserves in Białowieża Forest, on the border between Poland and Belarus.[254][255]

Other carnivores include the European wildcat, red fox and arctic fox, the golden jackal, different species of martens, the European hedgehog, different species of reptiles (like snakes such as vipers and grass snakes) and amphibians, as well as different birds (owls, hawks and other birds of prey).

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. A number of insects, such as the small tortoiseshell butterfly, add to the biodiversity.[256]

Sea creatures are also an important part of European flora and fauna. The sea flora is mainly phytoplankton. Important animals that live in European seas are zooplankton, molluscs, echinoderms, different crustaceans, squids and octopuses, fish, dolphins and whales.

Biodiversity is protected in Europe through the Council of Europe's Bern Convention, which has also been signed by the European Community as well as non-European states.

Politics

Main articles: Politics of Europe and Democracy in Europe

See also: List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe, International organisations in Europe, Regions of Europe, and European integration

A clickable Euler diagram[file] showing the relationships between various multinational European organisations and agreementsvte

The political map of Europe is substantially derived from the re-organisation of Europe following the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. 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. Europe's remaining eleven monarchies[257] are constitutional.

European integration is the process of political, legal, economic (and in some cases social and cultural) integration of European states as it has been pursued by the powers sponsoring the Council of Europe since the end of the Second World War. The European Union has been the focus of economic integration on the continent since its foundation in 1993. More recently, the Eurasian Economic Union has been established as a counterpart comprising former Soviet states.

27 European states are members of the politico-economic European Union, 26 of the border-free Schengen Area and 20 of the monetary union Eurozone. Among the smaller European organisations are the Nordic Council, the Benelux, the Baltic Assembly and the Visegrád Group.

Map of 2023 V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index for Europe

  0.900–1.000

  0.800–0.899

  0.700–0.799

  0.600–0.699

  0.500–0.599

  0.400–0.499

  0.300–0.399

  0.200–0.299

  0.100–0.199

  0.000–0.099

  No data

The least democratic countries in Europe are Belarus, Russia and Turkey in 2024 according to the V-Dem Democracy indices.[258]

List of states and territories

Main articles: List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe and Area and population of European countries

This list includes all internationally recognised sovereign countries falling even partially under any common geographical or political definitions of Europe.

Arms Flag Name Area

(km2) Population

Population

density

(per km2) Capital Name(s) in official language(s)

Albania Albania Albania 28,748 2,876,591 98.5 Tirana Shqipëria

Andorra Andorra Andorra 468 77,281 179.8 Andorra la Vella Andorra

Armenia Armenia Armenia[j] 29,743 2,924,816 101.5 Yerevan Հայաստան (Hayastan)

Austria Austria Austria 83,858 8,823,054 104 Vienna Österreich

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan Azerbaijan[k] 86,600 9,911,646 113 Baku Azərbaycan

Belarus Belarus Belarus 207,560 9,504,700 45.8 Minsk Беларусь (Belaruś)

Belgium Belgium Belgium 30,528 11,358,357 372.06 Brussels België/Belgique/Belgien

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina 51,129 3,531,159 68.97 Sarajevo Bosna i Hercegovina/Боснa и Херцеговина

Bulgaria Bulgaria Bulgaria 110,910 7,101,859 64.9 Sofia България (Bǎlgariya)

Croatia Croatia Croatia 56,594 3,871,833 68.4 Zagreb Hrvatska

Cyprus Cyprus Cyprus[d] 9,251 1,170,125 123.4 Nicosia Κύπρος (Kýpros)/Kıbrıs

Czech Republic Czech Republic Czech Republic 78,866 10,610,947 134 Prague Česko

Denmark Denmark Denmark 43,094 5,748,796 133.9 Copenhagen Danmark

Estonia Estonia Estonia 45,226 1,328,439 30.5 Tallinn Eesti

Finland Finland Finland 338,455 5,509,717 16 Helsinki Suomi/Finland

France France France[g] 547,030 67,348,000 116 Paris France

Georgia (country) Georgia (country) Georgia[l] 69,700 3,718,200 53.5 Tbilisi საქართველო (Sakartvelo)

Germany Germany Germany 357,168 82,800,000 232 Berlin Deutschland

Greece Greece Greece 131,957 10,297,760 82 Athens Ελλάδα (Elláda)

Hungary Hungary Hungary 93,030 9,797,561 105.3 Budapest Magyarország

Iceland Iceland Iceland 103,000 350,710 3.2 Reykjavík Ísland

Ireland Republic of Ireland Ireland 70,280 4,761,865 67.7 Dublin Éire/Ireland

Italy Italy Italy 301,338 60,589,445 201.3 Rome Italia

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan Kazakhstan[i] 148,000 17,987,736 6.49 Astana Қазақстан/Казахстан (Qazaqstan/Kazakhstan)

Latvia Latvia Latvia 64,589 1,907,675 29 Riga Latvija

Liechtenstein Liechtenstein Liechtenstein 160 38,111 227 Vaduz Liechtenstein

Lithuania Lithuania Lithuania 65,300 2,800,667 45.8 Vilnius Lietuva

Luxembourg Luxembourg Luxembourg 2,586 602,005 233.7 Luxembourg City Lëtzebuerg/Luxemburg/Luxembourg

Malta Malta Malta 316 445,426 1,410 Valletta Malta

Moldova Moldova Moldova[a] 33,846 3,434,547 101.5 Chișinău Moldova

Monaco Monaco Monaco 2.020 38,400 18,713 Monaco Monaco

Montenegro Montenegro Montenegro 13,812 642,550 45.0 Podgorica Crna Gora/Црна Гора

Netherlands Netherlands Netherlands[h] 41,543 17,271,990 414.9 Amsterdam Nederland

North Macedonia North Macedonia North Macedonia 25,713 2,103,721 80.1 Skopje Северна Македонија (Severna Makedonija)

Norway Norway Norway 385,203 5,295,619 15.8 Oslo Norge/Noreg/Norga

Poland Poland Poland 312,685 38,422,346 123.5 Warsaw Polska

Portugal Portugal Portugal[e] 92,212 10,379,537 115 Lisbon Portugal

Romania Romania Romania 238,397 18,999,642 84.4 Bucharest România

Russia Russia Russia[b] 3,969,100 144,526,636 8.4 Moscow Россия (Rossiya)

San Marino San Marino San Marino 61.2 33,285 520 San Marino San Marino

Serbia Serbia Serbia[f] 88,361 7,040,272 91.1 Belgrade Srbija/Србија

Slovakia Slovakia Slovakia 49,035 5,435,343 111.0 Bratislava Slovensko

Slovenia Slovenia Slovenia 20,273 2,066,880 101.8 Ljubljana Slovenija

Spain Spain Spain 505,990 46,698,151 92 Madrid España

Sweden Sweden Sweden 450,295 10,151,588 22.5 Stockholm Sverige

Switzerland Switzerland Switzerland 41,285 8,401,120 202 Bern Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera/Svizra

Turkey Turkey[m] 23,764 84,680,273 106.7 Ankara Türkiye

Ukraine Ukraine Ukraine[s] 603,628 42,418,235 73.8 Kyiv Україна (Ukraina)

United Kingdom United Kingdom United Kingdom 244,820 66,040,229 270.7 London United Kingdom

Vatican City Vatican City Vatican City 0.44 1,000 2,272 Vatican City Città del Vaticano/Civitas Vaticana

Total 50 10,180,000[n] 743,000,000[n] 73

Within the above-mentioned states are several de facto independent countries with limited to no international recognition. None of them are members of the UN:

Symbol Flag Name Area

(km2) Population

Population density

(per km2) Capital

Abkhazia Abkhazia Abkhazia[p] 8,660 243,206 28 Sukhumi

Kosovo Kosovo Kosovo[o] 10,908 1,920,079 159 Pristina

Northern Cyprus Northern Cyprus Northern Cyprus[d] 3,355 313,626 93 Nicosia (northern part)

South Ossetia South Ossetia South Ossetia[p] 3,900 53,532 13.7 Tskhinvali

Transnistria Transnistria Transnistria[a] 4,163 475,665 114 Tiraspol

Several dependencies and similar territories with broad autonomy are also found within or close to Europe. This includes Åland (an autonomous county of Finland), two autonomous territories of the Kingdom of Denmark (other than Denmark proper), three Crown Dependencies and two British Overseas Territories. Svalbard is also included due to its unique status within Norway, although it is not autonomous. Not included are the three countries of the United Kingdom with devolved powers and the two Autonomous Regions of Portugal, which despite having a unique degree of autonomy, are not largely self-governing in matters other than international affairs. Areas with little more than a unique tax status, such as the Canary Islands and Heligoland, are also not included for this reason.

Symbol Flag Name Sovereign

state Area

(km2) Population Population

density

(per km2) Capital

Åland Åland Åland Finland 1,580 29,489 18.36 Mariehamn

Bailiwick of Guernsey Bailiwick of Guernsey[c] UK 78 65,849 844.0 St. Peter Port

Jersey Jersey Bailiwick of Jersey[c] UK 118.2 100,080 819 Saint Helier

Faroe Islands Faroe Islands Faroe Islands Denmark 1,399 50,778 35.2 Tórshavn

Gibraltar Gibraltar Gibraltar UK 6.7 32,194 4,328 Gibraltar

Greenland Greenland Greenland Denmark[r] 2,166,086 55,877 0.028 Nuuk

Isle of Man Isle of Man Isle of Man[c] UK 572 83,314 148 Douglas

Svalbard Svalbard Norway 61,022 2,667

Economy

Main articles: Economy of Europe, List of sovereign states in Europe by GDP (nominal), and List of sovereign states in Europe by GDP (PPP)

GDP (PPP) per capita of European countries in 2021

     >$60,000      $50,000 – $60,000

     $40,000 – $50,000      $30,000 – $40,000

     $20,000 – $30,000      $10,000 – $20,000

As a continent, the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth and it is the richest region as measured by assets under management with over $32.7 trillion compared to North America's $27.1 trillion in 2008.[259] In 2009 Europe remained the wealthiest region. Its $37.1 trillion in assets under management represented one-third of the world's wealth. It was one of several regions where wealth surpassed its precrisis year-end peak.[260] As with other continents, Europe has a large wealth gap among its countries. The richer states tend to be in the Northwest and West in general, followed by Central Europe, while most economies of Eastern and Southeastern Europe are still reemerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The model of the Blue Banana was designed as an economic geographic representation of the respective economic power of the regions, which was further developed into the Golden Banana or Blue Star. The trade between East and West, as well as towards Asia, which had been disrupted for a long time by the two world wars, new borders and the Cold War, increased sharply after 1989. In addition, there is new impetus from the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative across the Suez Canal towards Africa and Asia.[261]

The European Union, a political entity composed of 27 European states, comprises the largest single economic area in the world. Nineteen EU countries share the euro as a common currency. Five European countries rank in the top ten of the world's largest national economies in GDP (PPP). This includes (ranks according to the CIA): Germany (6), Russia (7), the United Kingdom (10), France (11) and Italy (13).[262]

Some European countries are much richer than others. The richest in terms of nominal GDP is Monaco with its US$185,829 per capita (2018) and the poorest is Ukraine with its US$3,659 per capita (2019).[263]

As a whole, Europe's GDP per capita is US$21,767 according to a 2016 International Monetary Fund assessment.[264]

Rank Country GDP (nominal, Peak Year)

millions of USD Peak Year

 European Union[265] 19,226,235 2008

1 Germany 4,429,838 2023

2 United Kingdom 3,332,059 2023

3 France 3,049,016 2023

4 Italy[266] 2,408,655 2008

5 Russia 2,288,428 2013

6 Spain[267] 1,631,863 2008

7 Turkey 1,154,600 2023

8 Netherlands 1,092,748 2023

9   Switzerland 905,684 2023

10 Poland 842,172 2023

Rank Country GDP (PPP, Peak Year)

millions of USD Peak Year

 European Union[268] 25,430,409 2023

1 Germany 5,537,992 2023

2 Russia[269] 5,326,855 2022

3 United Kingdom 3,871,790 2023

4 France 3,868,619 2023

5 Turkey 3,613,540 2023

6 Italy 3,193,180 2023

7 Spain 2,413,066 2023

8 Poland 1,712,629 2023

9 Netherlands 1,297,024 2023

10 Romania 794,055 2022

Economic history

Industrial growth (1760–1945)

Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism.[270] From Britain, it gradually spread throughout Europe.[271] The Industrial Revolution started in Europe, specifically the United Kingdom in the late 18th century,[272] and the 19th century saw Western Europe industrialise. Economies were disrupted by the First World War, but by the beginning of the Second World War, they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic strength of the United States. The Second World War, again, damaged much of Europe's industries.

Cold War (1945–1991)

Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

Eurozone (blue colour)

After the Second World War the economy of the UK was in a state of ruin,[273] and continued to suffer relative economic decline in the following decades.[274] Italy was also in a poor economic condition but regained a high level of growth by the 1950s. West Germany recovered quickly and had doubled production from pre-war levels by the 1950s.[275] France also staged a remarkable comeback enjoying rapid growth and modernisation; later on Spain, under the leadership of Franco, also recovered and the nation recorded huge unprecedented economic growth beginning in the 1960s in what is called the Spanish miracle.[276] The majority of Central and Eastern European states came under the control of the Soviet Union and thus were members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON).[277]

The states which retained a free-market system were given a large amount of aid by the United States under the Marshall Plan.[278] The western states moved to link their economies together, providing the basis for the EU and increasing cross border trade. 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. Until 1990, the European Community was expanded from 6 founding members to 12. The emphasis placed on resurrecting the West German economy led to it overtaking the UK as Europe's largest economy.

Reunification (1991–present)

One of Kosovo's main economical sources is mining, because it has large reserves of lead, zinc, silver, nickel, cobalt, copper, iron and bauxite.[279] Miners at the Trepča Mines in Mitrovica, Kosovo in 2011.

With the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1991, the post-socialist states underwent shock therapy measures to liberalise their economies and implement free market reforms.

After East and West Germany were reunited in 1990, the economy of West Germany struggled as it had to support and largely rebuild the infrastructure of East Germany, while the latter experienced sudden mass unemployment and plummeting of industrial production.

By the millennium change, the EU dominated the economy of Europe, comprising the five largest European economies of the time: Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain. In 1999, 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined the Eurozone, replacing their national currencies by the euro.

Figures released by Eurostat in 2009 confirmed that the Eurozone had gone into recession in 2008.[280] It impacted much of the region.[281] In 2010, fears of a sovereign debt crisis[282] developed concerning some countries in Europe, especially Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal.[283] As a result, measures were taken, especially for Greece, by the leading countries of the Eurozone.[284] The EU-27 unemployment rate was 10.3% in 2012. For those aged 15–24 it was 22.4%.[285]

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Europe

See also: List of European countries by population, List of European countries by life expectancy, and Ageing of Europe

Population growth in and around Europe in 2021[286]

The population of Europe was about 742 million in 2023 according to UN estimates.[2][3] This is slightly more than one ninth of the world's population.[v] The population density of Europe (the number of people per area) is the second highest of any continent, behind Asia. The population of Europe is currently slowly decreasing, by about 0.2% per year,[287] because there are fewer births than deaths. This natural decrease in population is reduced by the fact that more people migrate to Europe from other continents than vice versa.

Southern Europe and Western Europe are the regions with the highest average number of elderly people in the world. In 2021, the percentage of people over 65 years old was 21% in Western Europe and Southern Europe, compared to 19% in all of Europe and 10% in the world.[288] Projections suggest that by 2050 Europe will reach 30%.[289] This is caused by the fact that the population has been having children below replacement level since the 1970s. The United Nations predicts that Europe will decline its population between 2022 and 2050 by −7 per cent, without changing immigration movements.[290]

According to a population projection of the UN Population Division, Europe's population may fall to between 680 and 720 million people by 2050, which would be 7% of the world population at that time.[291] Within this context, significant disparities exist between regions in relation to fertility rates. The average number of children per female of child-bearing age is 1.52, far below the replacement rate.[292] The UN predicts a steady population decline in Central and Eastern Europe as a result of emigration and low birth rates.[293]

Ethnic groups

Main article: Ethnic groups in Europe

Further information: Genetic history of Europe

Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities.[294]

Migration

Main articles: Immigration to Europe and European diaspora

Map showing areas of European settlement (people who claim full European descent)

Europe is home to the highest number of migrants of all global regions at nearly 87 million people in 2020, according to the International Organisation for Migration.[295] In 2005, the EU had an overall net gain from immigration of 1.8 million people. This accounted for almost 85% of Europe's total population growth.[296] In 2021, 827,000 persons were given citizenship of an EU member state, an increase of about 14% compared with 2020.[297] 2.3 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU in 2021.[297]

Early modern emigration from Europe began with Spanish and Portuguese settlers in the 16th century,[298][299] and French and English settlers in the 17th century.[300] But numbers remained relatively small until waves of mass emigration in the 19th century, when millions of poor families left Europe.[301]

Today, large populations of European descent are found on every continent. European ancestry predominates in North America and to a lesser degree in South America (particularly in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, while most of the other Latin American countries also have a considerable population of European origins). Australia and New Zealand have large European-derived populations. Africa has no countries with European-derived majorities (or with the exception of Cape Verde and probably São Tomé and Príncipe, depending on context), but there are significant minorities, such as the White South Africans in South Africa. In Asia, European-derived populations, specifically Russians, predominate in North Asia and some parts of Northern Kazakhstan.[302]

Languages

Main article: Languages of Europe

Distribution of major languages of Europe

See also: List of European languages by number of speakers

Europe has about 225 indigenous languages,[303] 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.[250] Slavic languages are mostly spoken in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. 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. Germanic languages are spoken in Western, Northern and Central Europe as well as in Gibraltar and Malta in Southern Europe.[250] Languages in adjacent areas show significant overlaps (such as in English, for example). 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[250]), Greek, Armenian and Albanian.

A distinct non-Indo-European family of Uralic languages (Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Erzya, Komi, Mari, Moksha and Udmurt) is spoken mainly in Estonia, Finland, Hungary and parts of Russia. 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). Kartvelian languages (Georgian, Mingrelian and Svan) are spoken primarily in Georgia. Two other language families reside in the North Caucasus (termed Northeast Caucasian, most notably including Chechen, Avar and Lezgin; and Northwest Caucasian, most notably including Adyghe). Maltese is the only Semitic language that is official within the EU, while Basque is the only European language isolate.

Multilingualism and the protection of regional and minority languages are recognised political goals in Europe today. The Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages set up a legal framework for language rights in Europe.

Religion

Main article: Religion in Europe

Religion in Europe according to the Global Religious Landscape survey by the Pew Forum, 2016[8]

  Christianity (76.2%)

  No religion (18.3%)

  Islam (4.9%)

  Buddhism (0.2%)

  Hinduism (0.2%)

  Folk religion (0.1%)

  Other religions (0.1%)

The largest religion in Europe is Christianity, with 76.2% of Europeans considering themselves Christians,[304][305] including Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and various Protestant denominations. Among Protestants, the most popular are Lutheranism, Anglicanism and the Reformed faith. Smaller Protestant denominations include Anabaptists as well as denominations centered in the United States such as Pentecostalism, Methodism, and Evangelicalism. Although Christianity originated in the Middle East, its centre of mass shifted to Europe when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the late 4th century. Christianity played a prominent role in the development of the European culture and identity.[306][307][308] Today, a bit over 25% of the world's Christians live in Europe.[309]

Islam is the second most popular religion in Europe. Over 25 million, or roughly 5% of the population, adhere to it.[310] In Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, two countries in the Balkan peninsula in Southeastern Europe, Islam instead of Christianity is the majority religion. This is also the case in Turkey and in certain parts of Russia, as well as in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, all of which are at the border to Asia.[310] Many countries in Europe are home to a sizeable Muslim minority, and immigration to Europe has increased the number of Muslim people in Europe in recent years.

The Jewish population in Europe was about 1.4 million people in 2020 (about 0.2% of the population).[311] There is a long history of Jewish life in Europe, beginning in antiquity. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Russian Empire had the majority of the world's Jews living within its borders.[312] In 1897, according to Russian census of 1897, the total Jewish population of Russia was 5.1 million people, which was 4.13% of total population. Of this total, the vast majority lived within the Pale of Settlement.[313] In 1933, there were about 9.5 million Jewish people in Europe, representing 1.7% of the population,[314] but most were killed, and most of the rest displaced, during The Holocaust.[315][311] In the 21st century, France has the largest Jewish population in Europe, followed by the United Kingdom, Germany and Russia.[8]

Other religions practiced in Europe include Hinduism and Buddhism, which are minority religions, except in Russia's Republic of Kalmykia, where Tibetan Buddhism is the majority religion.

A large and increasing number of people in Europe are irreligious, atheist and agnostic. They are estimated to make up about 18.3% of Europe's population currently.[8]

Major cities and urban areas

Further information: List of European cities by population within city limits

The three largest urban areas of Europe are Moscow, London and Paris. All have over 10 million residents,[316] and as such have been described as megacities.[317] While Istanbul has the highest total city population, it lies partly in Asia. 64.9% of the residents live on the European side and 35.1% on the Asian side. The next largest cities in order of population are Madrid, Saint Petersburg, Milan, Barcelona, Berlin, and Rome each having over three million residents.[316]

When considering the commuter belts or metropolitan areas within Europe (for which comparable data is available), Moscow covers the largest population, followed in order by Istanbul, London, Paris, Madrid, Milan, Ruhr Area, Saint Petersburg, Rhein-Süd, Barcelona and Berlin.[318]

European megacities

Moscow International Business Center

Moscow

City of London

London

Paris

Levent

Istanbul[b]

Culture

Main article: Culture of Europe

Further information: European folklore and European art

Map purportedly displaying the European continent split along cultural and state borders as proposed by the German organisation Ständiger Ausschuss für geographische Namen [de] (StAGN)

"Europe" as a cultural concept is substantially derived from the shared heritage of ancient Greece and the Roman Empire and its cultures. 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.[319]

This shared cultural heritage is combined by overlapping indigenous national cultures and folklores, roughly divided into Slavic, Latin (Romance) and Germanic, but with several components not part of either of these groups (notably Greek, Basque and Celtic). Historically, special examples with overlapping cultures are Strasbourg with Latin (Romance) and Germanic, or Trieste with Latin, Slavic and Germanic roots. Cultural contacts and mixtures shape a large part of the regional cultures of Europe. Europe is often described as "maximum cultural diversity with minimal geographical distances".

Different cultural events are organised in Europe, with the aim of bringing different cultures closer together and raising awareness of their importance, such as the European Capital of Culture, the European Region of Gastronomy, the European Youth Capital and the European Capital of Sport.

Sport

This section is an excerpt from Sport in Europe.[edit]

Football is one of the most popular sports in Europe. This picture shows Camp Nou in Barcelona before the renovation works started.

Sport in Europe tends to be highly organized with many sports having professional leagues.

The origins of many of the world's most popular sports today lie in the codification of many traditional games, especially in the United Kingdom. However, a paradoxical feature of European sport is the extent to which local, regional and national variations continue to exist, and even in some instances to predominate.[320]

Social dimension

In Europe many people are unable to access basic social conditions, which makes it harder for them to thrive and flourish. Access to basic necessities can be compromised, for example 10% of Europeans spend at least 40% of household income on housing. 75 million Europeans feel socially isolated. From the 1980s income inequality has been rising and wage shares have been falling. In 2016, the richest 20% of households earned over five times more than the poorest 20%. Many workers experience stagnant real wages and precarious work is common even for essential workers.[321]

See also

map Europe portal

Early modern Europe

Eurodistrict

European Games

European Union as a potential superpower

Euroregion

Financial and social rankings of sovereign states in Europe

Flags of Europe

Healthcare in Europe

List of sovereign states in Europe by GDP (nominal)

List of European television stations

List of names of European cities in different languages

List of villages in Europe

Lists of cities in Europe

Modernity

OSCE countries statistics

Pan-European identity

Travel guides from Wikivoyage

vte

Europe articles

History

Chronology

Bibliography of European historyPrehistoryClassical antiquityLate antiquityMiddle AgesEarly modernityWorld War IWorld War IIPax EuropaeaCrisis situations and unrest since 2000COVID-19 pandemic and Deltacron hybrid variant (2020-22)Russian invasion of Ukraine

By topic

MilitarySovereignty predecessor states

Geography

Areas and populationsCountries by area European microstatesLargest metropolitan areasCitiesClimateClimate changeExtreme pointsGeologyIslandsLakesMountainsRegionsRiversSovereign states and dependent territories by populationVillages

Politics

EurosphereInternational organisationsIntegrationLawPoliticsPost-Soviet EuropeTransatlantic relations

Intergovernmental

Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)Council of Europe (CoE)Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO)Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)European Political Community (EPC)GUAM OrganizationOpen BalkanNorth Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) statisticsOrganization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation

European Union

Economy relationsfree trade agreementsEducationEuropean Economic Area (EEA)European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) Eastern PartnershipEuronest Parliamentary AssemblyEuropean Union Customs Union (EUCU)EurozoneForeign relationsMembers enlargementPoliticsSchengen Area Visa policyStatistics

Economy

HistoryFinancial (and social) rankingsFree trade areasEnergyTelecommunicationsTransport

Intergovernmental

Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA)Eurasian Customs Union (EACU)Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC)European Free Trade Association (EFTA)

Sovereign states by

Average wageBudget revenues per capitaGDP (nominal) per capitaGDP (PPP) per capitaGNI (nominal) per capitaGNI (PPP) per capitaHDIInternet users (%)Minimum wagePress Freedom IndexUnemployment rate (%)Health expense per capitaMilitary spending (%)Urban population (%)Electricity use per capita

Society

Ages of consentEtiquetteSocial (and financial) rankingsLanguages endangeredTattooingUniversities Bologna ProcessErasmus

Culture

Art paintingsculptureArchitectureCapital of CultureCinema film festivalsClassical musicCuisineDanceLiteraturePhilosophyReligion ChristianityIslamJudaismSportSymbols (Armorial, Flags)

Demographics

AgeingChildhood population (%)Ethnic groups genetic historyImmigrationLife expectancyRetirement

OutlineIndex

CategoryPortalMaps

Articles related to Europe

vte

Countries and dependencies of Europe

Sovereign states

AlbaniaAndorraArmenia2AustriaAzerbaijan1BelarusBelgiumBosnia and HerzegovinaBulgariaCroatiaCyprus2Czech RepublicDenmarkEstoniaFinlandFranceGeorgia1GermanyGreeceHungaryIceland3IrelandItalyKazakhstan1LatviaLiechtensteinLithuaniaLuxembourgMaltaMoldovaMonacoMontenegroNetherlandsNorth MacedoniaNorwayPolandPortugalRomaniaRussia1San MarinoSerbiaSlovakiaSloveniaSpainSwedenSwitzerlandTurkey1UkraineUnited KingdomVatican City4

States with limited

recognition

Abkhazia2KosovoNorthern Cyprus2South Ossetia2Transnistria

Dependent

territories

Denmark

Faroe Islands3 autonomous country of the Kingdom of Denmark

United Kingdom

Akrotiri and Dhekelia2 (Sovereign Base Areas)Gibraltar (British Overseas Territory)

Crown Dependencies

Bailiwick of Guernsey AlderneyGuernseySarkBailiwick of JerseyIsle of Man

Special areas

of internal

sovereignty

Finland

Åland (autonomous region subject to the Åland convention of 1921)

Norway

Svalbard (unincorporated area subject to the Svalbard Treaty)

United Kingdom

EnglandScotlandWalesNorthern Ireland (country of the United Kingdom subject to the British-Irish Agreement)

1 Spans the conventional boundary between Europe and another continent.2 Considered European for cultural, political and historical reasons but is geographically in Western Asia.3 Oceanic islands within the vicinity of Europe are usually grouped with the continent even though they are not situated on its continental shelf.4 Governed by the Holy See which has sovereignty over Vatican City.

 Category Europe portal

vte

European diasporas

Britain and Ireland

CornishEnglishIrishManxScottishWelsh

Caucasus

ArmeniansAzerbaijanisCircassiansChechensGeorgians

Central Europe

AustriansCzechsCroatsGermans VolksdeutscheHungariansKashubiansPolesSlovaksSlovenesSwiss

Eastern Europe

BelarusiansCrimean TatarsRussiansUkrainians

Northern Europe

DanesEstoniansFinnsIcelandersLatgaliansLatviansLithuaniansNorwegiansSwedes

Southeastern Europe

Albanians KosovarsAromaniansBosniansBulgariansCypriots Greek CypriotsTurkish CypriotsGreeksMacedoniansRomanians MoldovansSerbsTurks Meskhetian Turks

Southwestern Europe

ItaliansMaltesePortugueseSpaniards AsturiansBasquesCanariansCatalansGalicians

Western Europe

Belgians FlandersWalloonsDutchFrench QuebecoisBretonsCorsicansLuxembourgers

Comprehensive group

AmericaArgentinaAustraliaBrazilCanadaMoroccoNew ZealandPakistanPeruTunisiaVenezuela

vte

Western world and culture

Foundations

Cradle of civilizationOld WorldGreco-Roman world GreeceHellenistic KingdomsRomeRoman Empire WesternEasternRoman legacyRomanizationRomano-Germanic cultureChristendom

History

European Bronze AgeClassical antiquity Late antiquityMiddle Ages earlyhighlateRenaissanceEarly modern period Age of DiscoveryReformationAge of EnlightenmentScientific RevolutionLate modern period Age of RevolutionRomanticismAbolitionismEmancipationCapitalismIndustrial RevolutionGreat DivergenceModern era ModernismWorld War IInterwar periodUniversal suffrageWorld War IICold WarPost–Cold War era Information ageWar on terrorPost-Western era

Culture

Alphabet GreekLatinCyrillicArchitectureArt PeriodsCalendarCuisine DietClassical tradition StudiesClothing HistoryDanceEsotericism AstrologyFolkloreImmigrationLawLanguages EurolinguisticsStandard Average EuropeanLiterature CanonMedia InternetMusic ChantClassicalFolkMythologyPainting (contemporary)Philosophy ScienceValuesPhysical culture SportReligion East–West SchismWestern ChristianityDeclineSecularism

Philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophyHellenistic philosophyAncient Roman philosophyJudeo-Christian ethicsChristian philosophyScholasticismRationalismEmpiricismExistentialism Christian existentialismHumanism Christian humanismSecular humanismLiberalismConservatismSocialismContinental philosophyAnalytic philosophyPost-structuralismTolerance ParadoxRelativism PeritropeAtlanticismValues

Religion

Abrahamic Judaism CultureChristianity Culture Western/EasternCatholic Church Latin ChurchEastern Orthodoxy Greek Orthodox ChurchProtestantismBábism AzaliBaháʼíDruzeMandaeismRastafariSamaritanismPaganism BalticCelticFinnishGermanic Anglo-SaxonFrankishGothicOld NorseHellenisticRomanSlavicNeoAgnosticismAtheism

Law

Natural lawRule of law Equality before the lawConstitutionalismHuman rights LifeThoughtSpeechPressReligionPropertyDemocracyInternational law

Contemporary

integration

ABCANZ ArmiesAnglo-Portuguese AllianceANZUSArctic CouncilAUKUSBaltic AssemblyBeneluxBritish–Irish CouncilBucharest NineCouncil of EuropeCraiova GroupEEAEFTAESAEUEU Customs UnionEurozoneEU–UK Trade and Cooperation AgreementFive Eyes G7Lancaster House TreatiesLublin TriangleNATONordic CouncilOASOSCEPacific Islands ForumPROSUL/PROSURRio TreatySchengenSpecial RelationshipThree Seas InitiativeUSMCAVisegrád GroupWest Nordic CouncilWestern BlocWestern European and Others GroupWesternization

vte

Continents of Earth

   

Africa

Antarctica

Asia

Australia

Europe

North America

South America

   

Afro-Eurasia

Americas

Eurasia

Oceania

   

Prehistoric supercontinents

ColumbiaGondwanaKenorlandLaurasiaNenaPangaeaPannotiaRodiniaUrVaalbara

Other prehistoric continents

AmazoniaArcticaAsiamericaAtlanticaAvaloniaBalticaChileniaCimmeriaCongo CratonCuyaniaEast AntarcticaEuramericaKalahariaKazakhstaniaLaramidiaLaurentiaNorth ChinaPampiaSahulSiberiaSouth China

   

Submerged continent/lands and microcontinents

BeringiaCathaysiaDoggerlandGreat Australian BightJan MayenKerguelen PlateauMadagascarMauritiaSahulSeychellesSundaZealandia

Possible future supercontinents

AmasiaAuricaNovopangaeaPangaea Proxima

Mythical, lost, and hypothesised continents

AtlantisHyperboreaKumari KandamLemuriaMeropisMuTerra Australis

Subcontinents

AlaskaArabiaCentral AmericaEastern AfricaEastern SiberiaGreenlandIndian Subcontinent

See also:  World portalRegions of the worldContinental fragment CategoryChronology of continents

vte

Earth's primary regions and subregions

Africa

MediterraneanSaharan Northern MaghrebMiddle EastMiddle East and North AfricaMashriqSub-Saharan WesternEast HornGreat LakesCentralSouthernIslands

North America

Northern Pacific NorthwestNortheastern United StatesNew EnglandMidwestMid-AtlanticWestern United StatesSouthwestMountain statesSouth Central United StatesSouthern United StatesEast CoastWest CoastBible BeltAppalachiaGreat LakesEastern CanadaWestern CanadaCanadian PrairiesNorthern CanadaAtlantic CanadaNorthern MexicoAridoamericaCaribbeanWest IndiesCentralMiddleMesoamericaAngloFrenchLatin Ibero HispanicPortugueseLatin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

South America

SouthernNorthern (Guianan states)WesternWest IndiesPatagoniaAmazonLAC

Asia

Central Aral SeaAralkum DesertCaspian SeaFar East RussianEastern NortheasternInner AsiaSoutheastern MainlandMaritimeNorthern SiberiaUralSouthern Eastern South AsiaHimalayan statesIndian subcontinentWestern Levant Dead SeaMediterraneanIranian PlateauArabian PeninsulaCaucasus South CaucasusMiddle East Middle East and North AfricaNear EastMashriqAsia–Pacific

Europe

CentralNorthern BalticBritish IslesNordicNorthwesternScandinavia Scandinavian PeninsulaEastern SoutheasternBalkansCaucasus South CaucasusNorth CaucasusSouthern RussiaEuropean RussiaSouthern IberiaItaly Italian PeninsulaBalkansSoutheasternMediterraneanMiddle EastWestern AtlanticLow CountriesNorthwesternGermanicRomanceCelticSlavic

Oceania

Australasia AustraliaNew GuineaZealandiaPacific Islands MicronesiaMelanesiaPolynesia

Polar

AntarcticArctic

Oceans

World (Sea)Antarctic/Southern ConvergenceArcticAtlanticIndianPacific Great Barrier ReefMariana TrenchRing of FireList of seas

Non-continent-based

world regions

Global North and Global South Global NorthwestGlobal SouthwestGlobal East Global SoutheastLand and water hemispheres

 Continents of Earth / List of seas / Physical Earth

Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata

International

FASTVIAFWorldCat

National

GermanyIsraelUnited StatesSwedenJapanCzech Republic

Geographic

MusicBrainz areaPleiades

Other

Encyclopedia of Modern UkraineHistorical Dictionary of SwitzerlandNARAİslâm Ansiklopedisi

Categories: EuropeContinents

Who was Britannia

Who was Britannia?

Britannia is the symbol of Britain bestowed on the nation by the Romans and the physical representation of the nation.

Originally, Great Britain was called ‘Albion’ by the Romans, who invaded Britain in 55BC, but this later became ‘Britannia’. This Latin word referred to England and Wales, but was not used for a long time after the Romans left. The name  was then revived in the age of the Empire.

The Romans created a goddess of Britannia, wearing a Centurion helmet and toga, with her right breast exposed. In the Victorian period, when the British Empire was rapidly expanding, this was altered to include her brandishing a trident and a shield with the British flag on, a perfect patriotic representation of the nation’s militarism.

She was also standing in the water, often with a lion (England’s national animal), representing the nation’s oceanic dominance. The Victorians were also too prudish to leave her breast uncovered, and modestly covered it to protect her dignity!

Britannia has been used to reflect the mood of Britain for over 350 years, with artists and sculptors portraying her as the face of the nation. 

So who is Britannia. She holds her ancient warrior attributes – crested helmet, spear and shield, as a constant, a sign of stability, a long-lasting emblem of a nation.

 

She is holding her spear (or in this case her L96) with serenity and her shield with strength. Great Britain is illustrated by incorporating Britannia into its silhouette – her flowing robe is in fact the stable, rocky surface of Britain itself. 

We have our own range of Britannia products Tactical Britannia, see the T-Shirt Here. See Mugs Here. See Stickers Here.

The patriotic song ‘Rule, Britannia!, Britannia rule the waves’, is traditionally performed at the ‘Last Night of the Proms’ which takes place each year at the Royal Albert Hall.

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

When Britain first, at heaven's command,

Arose from out the azure main,

This was the charter of the land,

And Guardian Angels sang this strain:

 

The nations not so blest as thee

Must, in their turn, to tyrants fall,

While thou shalt flourish great and free:

The dread and envy of them all.

 

Still more majestic shalt thou rise,

More dreadful from each foreign stroke,

As the loud blast that tears the skies

Serves but to root thy native oak.

 

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;

All their attempts to bend thee down

Will but arouse thy generous flame,

But work their woe and thy renown.

 

To thee belongs the rural reign;

Thy cities shall with commerce shine;

All thine shall be the subject main,

And every shore it circles, thine.

 

The Muses, still with freedom found,

Shall to thy happy coasts repair.

Blest isle! with matchless beauty crowned,

And manly hearts to guard the fair.

 

Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!

Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

Boris Johnson

Conservative British politician Boris Johnson became the second elected mayor of London before overseeing the U.K.'s departure from the European Union as prime minister.

By Biography.Com EditorsUPDATED: DEC 1, 2022

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - OCTOBER 16: British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson waits for the arrival of US Secretary of State John Kerry for a meeting on the situation in Syria at Lancaster House on October 16, 2016 in London, England. (Photo by Justin Tallis - WPA Pool /Getty Images)pinterest

Getty Images / WPA Pool / Pool

(1964-)

Who Is Boris Johnson?

After beginning his career as a journalist, Boris Johnson became a prominent editor while simultaneously building his political base as a Conservative MP. A surprise winner of London's mayoral race in 2008, the famously disheveled politician championed the "Leave" movement of the Brexit referendum in 2016 before spending two years as foreign secretary. Elevated to prime minister in 2019, Johnson engineered the U.K.'s break from the European Union but was criticized for breaking Covid-19 lockdown rules and resigned his premiership in July 2022.

How Old Is Boris Johnson?

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in New York City on June 19, 1964.

Parents and Siblings

Johnson is the oldest of four children born to dad Stanley, a politician, environmentalist and author, and mom Charlotte, a painter.

His sister, Rachel, went on to earn acclaim as a journalist; his middle brother, Jo, became a member of Parliament and government minister; and his youngest brother, Leo, embarked on a career in finance. Johnson also has two half-siblings, Maximilian and Julia, from Stanley's second marriage.

Early Years and Education

Thanks to his father's varied professional pursuits, Johnson moved 32 times by age 14. The family's travels included stops in London, where Johnson attended Primrose Hill Primary School, and Brussels, where he was enrolled at the European School.

Affected by a medical condition known as "glue ear," which left him partially deaf until around age eight, Johnson was said to be a quiet, studious boy. He began emerging from his shell after being sent away to Ashdown House, a boarding school in East Sussex, where he studied ancient Greek and Latin and developed a love for rugby.

At Eton College, Johnson dropped his first name and honed a more extroverted personality. He headed the debate society, was named captain of school and joined the exclusive "Pop" club, though he also rankled faculty to the point where one housemaster criticized his "disgracefully cavalier attitude."

After a gap year spent teaching in Australia, Johnson returned to England to study classics at the University of Oxford's Balliol College. A standout among fellow future stars, he became president of the Oxford Union, co-edited the satirical publication Tributary and joined the Bullingdon Club before earning an upper second-class degree in 1987.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Journalist and Politician

Johnson began his journalism career as a graduate trainee for The Times but was fired the following year after attributing a fabricated quote to his godfather, renowned academic Colin Lucas.

Landing on his feet as the Brussels correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, Johnson carved out a reputation for his exaggerated but entertaining critiques of the European Commission. He later likened the experience to "chucking these rocks over the garden wall and [listening] to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England."

Johnson served as the Telegraph's chief political columnist and an assistant editor from 1994-99 and then as editor of The Spectator, a right-wing magazine, until 2005. During this time, he also began writing a regular automotive column for GQ and saw his celebrity grow via well-received appearances on the popular quiz show "Have I Got News for You."

Johnson also launched his political career as a Conservative MP from Henley, Oxfordshire, in 2001. Forced from his position as party vice-chair and shadow arts minister after lying about an affair in 2004, he rebounded to win reelection the following year and became shadow higher education minister under Conservative leader David Cameron.

Mayor of London

Named the Tory candidate for London mayor in 2007, Johnson earned his first taste of international attention for his disheveled appearance and energetic but bumbling ways. He ultimately defeated the Labour incumbent, Ken Livingstone, to become the city's second elected mayor in 2008.

Recovering from a chaotic start in which several top aides resigned, Johnson introduced the "Boris bikes" cycle-sharing program in 2010 and the new-and-improved "Boris bus" fleet in early 2012.

Although he was criticized for his response to the 2011 London riots, he held on to defeat Livingstone and earn a second term in office in 2012.

Johnson subsequently saw the completion of the ArcelorMittal Orbit observation tower and Emirates Air Line cable cars in time for the 2012 London Olympics, which provided the lasting image of the mayor stuck on a zip line above Victoria Park. Other ambitious projects, such as the "Boris island" airport and garden bridge over the River Thames, never came to fruition despite his efforts.

Brexit Campaign

Along with taking on another elected post as MP of Uxbridge and South Ruislip in 2015, Johnson spent his final weeks as mayor engaged in the contentious issue of Brexit, a referendum on whether to continue the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union.

Initially unsure which side to take, Johnson eventually emerged as the face of the "Leave" campaign, in direct opposition to Prime Minister Cameron. His populist message for an independent U.K. resonated with the public, resulting in the electorate's historic vote to leave the E.U. on June 23, 2016.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Johnson subsequently launched a bid to replace Cameron as the Conservative leader but bowed out by the end of June, paving the way for Theresa May to take over as prime minister.

Foreign Secretary

Named May's secretary of state for foreign and Commonwealth affairs in July 2016, Johnson soon ran into trouble with his off-the-cuff commentary. After initially defending the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, he accused the Middle Eastern country of "puppeteering and playing proxy wars." Later, his incorrect assessment that a British-Iranian national was "teaching" when arrested for spying in Iran reportedly bolstered the accusations that she was spreading propaganda.

Johnson dutifully represented the country's interests in rebuking the alleged Russian use of a deadly nerve agent and supporting the Iran nuclear deal. But he also feuded with his boss over her attempts to negotiate the U.K.'s break from the E.U. Dismayed by the proposed compromises, Johnson stepped down as foreign secretary in July 2018.

U.K. Prime Minister

After May resigned in May 2019 over an inability to forge a Brexit agreement, Johnson again sought control of the party leadership. This time, he emerged victorious after promising to pull out of the E.U. by October 31, regardless of whether or not a deal was in place, and took over as prime minister on July 24, 2019.

Johnson quickly found himself at odds with lawmakers after asking Queen Elizabeth II to suspend Parliament until mid-October, with critics charging that he was narrowing the opportunity for opposition to his Brexit plans. Parliament subsequently passed a bill that required the PM to request an extension for the U.K.'s departure by October 19 if he was unable to broker an agreement with the E.U. or earn the necessary consent for a no-deal Brexit.

While Johnson was forced to seek the extension, he was successful in bringing his case to the people with a snap election. Riding the slogan "get Brexit done," the Conservative Party proved the decisive winner in the December 2019 general election, giving Johnson time to fine-tune the minutiae of a final deal after the country's formal exit from the E.U. on January 31, 2020.

Meanwhile, a new crisis emerged that year with the rapid onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Initially reluctant to curb the flow of business and public interaction, Johnson finally announced the closure of stores and restaurants on March 20 before imposing strict lockdown measures a few days later. He then landed in intensive care after contracting the virus at the end of the month.

Although the U.K. became the first Western nation to greenlight a vaccine in December 2020, it also became the first European nation to surpass 100,000 casualties from the illness in January 2021. Later that year, a report slammed the "public health failures" in the country brought about by governmental delays in enacting social distancing guidelines.

Johnson’s problems compounded by April 2022 when he was fined for breaking lockdown rules. The following month, he was named a primary culprit in a series of lockdown-defying social gatherings among government employees, a scandal dubbed "Partygate."

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

After he survived a no-confidence vote from party members in June, the revelation that Johnson was aware of sexual misconduct allegations against deputy chief whip Chris Pincher triggered a wave of government resignations headlined by Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Health Secretary Sajid Javid. On July 7, 2022, Johnson bowed to the pressure to resign as prime minister.

Although former Foreign Secretary Liz Truss took over as party leader and premier, she, too, resigned less than two months later after several public missteps. Initially interested in reclaiming the job, Johnson withdrew his name from consideration shortly before Sunak was announced as the new PM on October 24, 2022.

Books

Johnson has authored several books, dating back to his tales from the campaign trail with Friends, Voters, Countrymen (2001). Other works include the novel Seventy-Two Virgins (2003); an examination of antiquity with The Dream of Rome (2006); a book of poetry and illustrations with The Perils of the Pushy Parents (2007); and the biography The Churchill Factor (2014).

Wives and Children

Johnson has been married three times and fathered seven children. After meeting Allegra Mostyn-Owen at Oxford, the two were married in 1987 before having the union annulled in 1993. That year Johnson wed lawyer Marina Wheeler, with whom he had daughters Lara and Cassia and sons Milo and Theodore.

Following the revelation that he had another daughter, Stephanie, with journalist Helen MacIntyre, Johnson and Wheeler divorced in 2018. The prime minister then married public relations executive Carrie Symonds in 2021 and added to his family with son Wilfred and daughter Romy.

QUICK FACTS

Birth Year: 1964

Birth date: June 19, 1964

Best Known For: Conservative British politician Boris Johnson became the second elected mayor of London before overseeing the U.K.'s departure from the European Union as prime minister.

Industries

Politics

Writing and Publishing

Astrological Sign: Gemini

Schools

University of Oxford, Balliol College

Interesting Facts

Johnson was the third published novelist to become U.K. prime minister, after Benjamin Disraeli and Winston Churchill.

Occupations

Political Figure

Writer

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us!

CITATION INFORMATION

Article Title: Boris Johnson Biography

Author: Biography.com Editors

Website Name: The Biography.com website

Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figure/boris-johnson

Access Date:

Publisher: A&E; Television Networks

Last Updated: December 1, 2022

Original Published Date: December 1, 2022

QUOTES

I want you to know how sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the breaks.

I want to have my cake and eat it.

All romantics need the mortar of cynicism to hold themselves up.

People live by narrative, human beings are creatures of the imagination.

  • Condition: In Excellent Condition
  • Options: Commemorative
  • Modification Description: No
  • Collections/ Bulk Lots: Brexit
  • Fineness: 0.5
  • Material: Metal
  • Modified Item: No
  • Colour: Gold Silver
  • Year of Issue: Unknown
  • Currency: Commerative
  • Features: Commemorative
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United Kingdom
  • Variety: Library of Congress
  • Country of Origin: United States

PicClick Insights - Brexit Gold Silver Coin Rule Britannia EU Europe Britain Exit Signed Union Jack PicClick Exclusive

  •  Popularity - 0 watchers, 0.0 new watchers per day, 1 day for sale on eBay. 0 sold, 1 available.
  •  Best Price -
  •  Seller - 3,239+ items sold. 0.3% negative feedback. Top-Rated Plus! Top-Rated Seller, 30-day return policy, ships in 1 business day with tracking.

People Also Loved PicClick Exclusive