Maastricht Treaty

The Treaty on European Union, signed in the Dutch city of Maastricht on 7 February 1992, turned the European Communities into the European Union. Agreed by the twelve member states, it created a common citizenship of the Union, set out the path to a single currency, and added co-operation on foreign policy and on justice and home affairs. It came into force on 1 November 1993, after a series of difficult ratification battles that revealed how divided Europeans were over the pace of integration.

The treaty was negotiated as the Cold War ended. The revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall raised the prospect of a reunited Germany, which worried its neighbours. The French president François Mitterrand had long wanted to bind West Germany into a currency partnership, and according to many accounts he made acceptance of reunification conditional on Germany giving up the Deutsche Mark for a common currency. Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed. Leaders also had to balance states that wanted deeper union against those that wished to keep more national control.

The treaty built the new Union on three "pillars". The first was the existing communities, with the European Economic Community, founded by the Treaty of Rome, renamed simply the European Community and given new responsibilities in areas such as education, culture, public health, consumer protection and the environment. The second and third pillars, common foreign and security policy and co-operation on justice and home affairs, remained largely intergovernmental, run by national governments acting together rather than by the Community institutions. The treaty also gave the directly elected European Parliament a share in passing some laws through a "co-decision" procedure, the right to approve the Commission, and wrote the principle of subsidiarity into the Union's rules.

Every national of a member state became a citizen of the Union, gaining for the first time the right to vote and stand in local and European elections in another member country. For economic and monetary union, the treaty set convergence criteria that states had to meet before adopting the single currency: low inflation and interest rates, stable exchange rates, an annual budget deficit below 3 per cent of gross domestic product and government debt below 60 per cent. A European Central Bank, independent of governments and devoted above all to price stability, would manage the currency, which was named the euro in 1995 and introduced on 1 January 1999. The United Kingdom secured opt-outs from the single currency and from the treaty's social policy agreement.

Danish voters rejected the treaty by 50.7 to 49.3 per cent on 2 June 1992. After Denmark won its own opt-out from the single currency, a second referendum in May 1993 approved it. Irish voters backed it comfortably, but in France it passed in September 1992 with only 50.8 per cent, the so-called "petit oui". In Britain, Prime Minister John Major overcame a rebellion in his own Conservative Party only by turning a vote into a question of confidence. In Germany a challenge before the Constitutional Court delayed ratification until October 1993.

The treaty was later amended at Amsterdam and Nice, and in 2009 the Treaty of Lisbon reshaped it further. During the eurozone debt crisis that began in 2009, the Maastricht criteria became the focus of fierce argument between supporters of fiscal discipline and critics who blamed them for austerity.

Our 1994 map shows Europe soon after the treaty took effect, with a reunited Germany and the post-communist states of central and eastern Europe.