Western Europe: Nations and Economic Core

Western Europe, understood in a geographic rather than strictly Cold War political sense, comprises France, Germany, the Benelux countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, the United Kingdom and Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria. These states, together with Italy, formed the six founding members, minus Italy's inclusion instead of the UK, of the European Coal and Steel Community established by the Treaty of Paris in 1951 and its successor, the European Economic Community, founded by the Treaty of Rome signed in March 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. This grouping of states, sharing the Carolingian core of the former Frankish Empire under Charlemagne, crowned in 800 CE, has anchored European political and economic integration for the seven decades since, even as the United Kingdom formally departed the European Union on 31 January 2020, following the June 2016 Brexit referendum.