The European Union is in 1998 on the threshold of great changes. The euro is to become the single currency for most of the member states. Negotiations for the accession of six new states have begun and membership, which already covers almost all of Western Europe, will before long extend to most of Central and Eastern Europe, too. The Union's institutions will be reformed. Its powers may soon reach beyond the economy and the environment into the fields of foreign policy and defence. First published as European Community: The Building of a Union, this third edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to take these recent developments into account. John Pinder provides a view of the evolution of the European Union, and investigates its future as Europe approaches the millennium.