The European Union (EU) is a unique economic and political union between 27 European countries. The predecessor of the EU was created in the aftermath of the Second World War. The first steps were to foster economic cooperation: the idea being that countries that trade with one another become economically interdependent and so more likely to avoid conflict.

The European Union is not a state, but a unique partnership between European countries, known as Member States. Together they cover much of the European continent. The EU is home to over 446 million people, which corresponds to around 6 % of the world's population. Citizens of the EU Member States are also citizens of the European Union.

Union level institutions and compare them to the implications of normative policy models and to the preferences of European citizens. For this purpose we construct a set of indicators to measure the policy-making intensity of the European Union (European Council, Parliament, Commission, Court of Justice, etc.).

We confirm that the extent and the intensity of policy-making by the EU have increased sharply over the last 30 years, but at different speeds, and in different degrees, across policy domains. In recent years the areas that have expanded most are quite remote from the EEC’s original mission of establishing a free market zone with common external trade policy.