ce 1930) and established a socialist state. Torn
by bloody coups, uprisings, wide-scale drought, and massive refugee
problems, the regime was finally toppled in 1991 by a coalition of
rebel forces, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF). A constitution was adopted in 1994, and Ethiopia's first
multiparty elections were held in 1995. A border war with Eritrea
late in the 1990s ended with a peace treaty in December 2000. The
Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission in November 2007 remotely
demarcated the border by geographical coordinates, but final
demarcation of the boundary on the ground is currently on hold
because of Ethiopian objections to an international commission's
finding requiring it to surrender territory considered sensitive to
Ethiopia.

European Union
Following the two devastating World Wars of the first
half of the 20th century, a number of European leaders in the late
1940s became convinced that the only way to establish a lasting
peace was to unite the two chief belligerent nations - France and
Germany - both economically and politically. In 1950, the French
Foreign Minister Robert SCHUMAN proposed an eventual union of all
Europe, the first step of which would be the integration of the coal
and steel industries of Western Europe. The following year the
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was set up when six
members, Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the
Netherlands, signed the Treaty of Paris.
The ECSC was so successful that within a few years the decision was
made to integrate other parts of the countries' economies. In 1957,
the Treaties of Rome created the European Economic Community (EEC)
and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), and the six
member states undertook to eliminate trade barriers among themselves
by forming a common market. In 1967, the institutions of all three
communities were formally merged into the European Community (EC),
creating a single Commission, a single Council of Ministers, and the
European Parliament. Members of the European Parliament were
initially selected by national parliaments, but in 1979 the first
direct elections were undertaken and they have been held every five
years since.
In 1973, the first enlargement of the EC took place with the
addition of Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. The 1980s saw
further membership expansion wi