The European Union is one of the major superpowers on Earth as of the year 2748. As well, they are, in terms of date of formal establishment, the oldest of the powers - the Union was formally established in far different form back in 1993 by the Treaty of Maastricht.
Since an initial flurry of growth ending in the late twenty-first century, the European Union has been largely stagnant in structure, although they have added a number of former North African and Middle Eastern countries to their sphere of influence as "dependencies". The EU, although somewhat on the decline, remains formidable, and a series of non-nuclear wars with the Russian Federation and later Union of Russian Federations were the major events until the interstellar era.
The European Union financed one-quarter of the Persephone expedition and provided one of the colony ships, the SV Marco Polo?, to the expedition. They continue to finance the colony, although they have contributed relatively little to its actual colonisation, as somewhere between twelve to fifteen percent of the colonists.
The capital of the European Union is, as of 2483, located in Madrid.