Europe History, Countries, Map, & Facts3%random_number(xxxx)%

Europe History, Countries, Map, & Facts

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. 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. The invaders, who became known as Tatars, were mostly Turkic-speaking peoples under Mongol suzerainty. Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongols. In the east, a resurgent Byzantine Empire recaptured Crete and Cyprus from the Muslims, and reconquered the Balkans.

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In addition to national territories in Europe, there are 32 special territories of members of the European Economic Area, not all of which are best online casino europe part of the EU. The lowest points in the EU are Lammefjorden, Denmark, and Zuidplaspolder, Netherlands, at 7 m (23 ft) below sea level. The EU’s highest peak is Mont Blanc in the Graian Alps, 4,810.45 metres (15,782 ft) above sea level. France and Italy are also the only EU countries that have power projection capabilities outside of Europe.

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The Italian Renaissance spread across many Western European countries, adapting to local contexts and giving rise to distinct national expressions. The culture of Europe 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. Europe had a total population of about 745 million (about 10% of the world population) in 2021; the third-largest after Asia and Africa. 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. 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.

• As a whole, Europe’s GDP per capita is US$21,767 according to a 2016 International Monetary Fund assessment.
• Access to basic necessities can be compromised, for example 10% of Europeans spend at least 40% of household income on housing.
• A 2021 study in the Journal of Political Economy found that the 2004 enlargement had aggregate beneficial economic effects on all groups in both the old and new member states.
• 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.
• The 2025 fire season was the worst on record for the European Union.

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Indented by numerous bays, fjords, and seas, continental Europe’s highly irregular coastline is about 24,000 miles (38,000 km) long. Europe’s largest islands and archipelagoes include Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the British Isles, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Crete, and Cyprus. Drivers and commuters have been warned to allow extra time for their journeys due to protests on roads.

Described by some as the union’s “supreme political leadership”, it is actively involved in the negotiation of treaty changes and defines the EU’s policy agenda and strategies. Aristide Briand—who was Prime Minister of France, a follower of the Paneuropean Union, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for the Locarno Treaties—delivered a widely recognised speech at the League of Nations in Geneva on 5 September 1929 for a federal Europe to secure Europe and settle the historic Franco-German enmity. The eurozone is a group composed of the 21 EU member states that have fully implemented the EU’s economic and monetary union and use the euro currency. The supranational union has a total area of 4,233,255 km2 (1,634,469 sq mi) and an estimated population of more than 450 million as of 2025. 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.

Until the drive towards economic and monetary union the development of the capital provisions had been slow. The European Union uses foreign relations instruments like the European Neighbourhood Policy which seeks to tie those countries to the east and south of the European territory of the EU to the union. In addition to the legislative functions, members of the council also have executive responsibilities, such as the development of a Common Foreign and Security Policy and the coordination of broad economic policies within the union.

Europe, second smallest of the world’s continents, composed of the westward-projecting peninsulas of Eurasia (the great landmass that it shares with Asia) and occupying nearly one-fifteenth of the world’s total land area. Since 2008, the organisers of this prize, in conjunction with the European Parliament, have awarded the Charlemagne Youth Prize in recognition of similar efforts led by young people. The commission has named one of its central buildings in Brussels after Charlemagne and the city of Aachen has since 1949 awarded the Charlemagne Prize to champions of European unification. Known from the myth in which Zeus seduces her in the guise of a white bull, Europa has also been referred to in relation to the present union. Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars symbolise the peoples of Europe in a form of a circle, the sign of union. The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Consumers seeks to align national laws on the protection of people’s health, on the consumers’ rights, on the safety of food and other products.