United Europe

This is when all of Europe becomes united under a single powerful government that either supersedes or in extreme cases supplants the traditional national governments of Europe. Usually, the government in question takes the form of an expanded version of The European Union, or is a clear Expy thereof. This trope is often found in stories that take place 20 Minutes into the Future.

A recurring phenomenon in this trope, especially if the creator is British or American, is that Britain will not be part of a United Europe, even well before Britain actually left the European Union in 2020.^note Prior to the 2016 referendum approving Leave, although Britain was considered the most Eurosceptic country, the political and business elites strongly supported continued EU membership and had always been willing to go along with EU integration - albeit usually with opt-outs from certain measures. Oddly enough, the very independent and politically neutral Switzerland, as well as Norway (neither of which were ever in the EU) rarely get the same treatment. It should come as no surprise therefore that this trope varies depending on who's making the work in question. Another recurring phenomenon is that the capital of the United Europe rarely stays as Brussels, usually moving to Paris or Berlin, probably because audiences can easily recognize these landmark-heavy locations over the less-visited Brussels.

See the Analysis subpage for more details about the real-life EU as it pertains to this trope.

See also Space-Filling Empire. Compare Expanded States of America, Middle Eastern Coalition, and the even less plausible United Nations Is a Superpower. Contrast Balkanize Me.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Code Geass has a European Union (known as "Europia United") which was founded after its version of the French Revolution was able to successfully sweep across the entire continent, including even Great Britain. In this alternate timeline, Napoleon was a victorious general but there are conflicting versions about his fate. One story says the British royal family had him assassinated as they fled to the still-loyal American colonies, while the Europeans themselves claim that he was executed by his own people in order to prevent him from establishing a dictatorship. The E.U. was also the only one out of the three original superpowers that was democratic.
  • While the E.U. is mostly in the background in the original show, Code Geass: Akito the Exiled is set entirely in Europe, and shows us the continent isn't as united as it sounds. The major conflict in the OVA series is between the United Republic of Europia (which is most of Western and Central Europe with its capital in Paris) vs. Euro Britannia, which remains loyal to the Holy Britannian Empire (consisting mainly of Eastern Europe and Russia, with its capital in St. Petersburg). The major battles in the series take place in Poland and Belarus, which is the front line of the European theater of war.
• Gundam has several examples.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny has the Eurasian Federation, a member of the Earth Alliance which (unusually for this trope) includes all of Russia and the Middle East as well as Europe proper.
  • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 gives us the Advanced European Union as one of the world's three superpowers, which is (as the name suggests) basically the European Union 20 Minutes into the Future.
• In Naoki Urasawa's Pluto the EU has evolved into the European Federation and expanded to include Turkey.
• While it's not the EU, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz reveals that the Earth Sphere Unified Nation's capital is Brussels, Belgium. Though that said, the ESUN does have a decidedly European flavor.

Comic Books

• Judge Dredd: Europe is usually said to have two different Mega Cities: Brit Cit and Euro Cit.^note Ireland could also be counted as a separate entity, but that's a whole 'nother story: it's literally a giant theme park. So, the Britons are still independent, but the rest of the continent (or whatever's left of it after the Great Atomic War) is implied to be unified in one polity.

Films — Animation

• The European Confederation is mentioned as the place where all the action happens in The Sky Crawlers, but this isn't elaborated further. Maps still seem to have national borders drawn on them, but they are crossed by private military forces without incident or even mention.

Literature

• A.J. Butcher's Spy High has a united Europe called "Europa".
• Eric Flint's 1632 series features a 'United States of Europe' though it is actually more of a United States of Germany, plus bits of OTL France, Denmark, Poland, and Austria.
• Incompetence by Red Dwarf creator Rob Grant, where stupidity is a constitutionally protected right.
• The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey was a work of fundamentalist Christian eschatology predicting a united Europe ruled over by The Antichrist. This became a fairly common expectation among the US Christian Right for much of the eighties and nineties, until Islam became the new bogey.
• In George Orwell's 1984, all of continental Europe and part of (mostly northern) Asia were united in one nation, called appropriately enough "Eurasia", while Great Britain was a part of "Oceania", which consisted of the territories of the Americas and the former British Empire. (Orwell borrowed the vision of a British-American fusion and a Eurasian USSR from the writings of James Burnham, but his own preferred plan was uniting Britain with the other Western European states, minus their colonies, into a democratic Socialist federation.)
• In Andrew Roberts' The Aachen Memorandum, the United Kingdom regains its independence after being under the thumb of a corrupt and dictatorial European Union.
• In the HEX series of novels set 20 Minutes into the Future, the main characters are fighting against/fleeing from the forces of the corrupt European Federation.
• In Orson Scott Card's Alternate History series Alvin Maker, Napoleon suceeds in this by not engaging in his disastrous invasion of Russia and declaring a unilateral cease-fire with Britain.
• In John Barnes' Mother Of Storms the European Union has both become more cohesive and taken a racist turn, expelling everyone of non-European descent. By the end of the book it's started to come apart at the seams due to the eponymous crisis.
• In Tom Kratman's Caliphate, Western Europe becomes mostly Islamic, under the control of the eponymous Caliphate. The British Isles and Switzerland, however, are not under Islamic control.
• Peter F. Hamilton's Great North Road has Grande Europe.
• Played with in the Star Carrier series. The Paneuropean Federation appears to be this, except the various nationalities are still bickering constantly. Very few think of themselves as "European" (or "Paneuropean") but still as British, French, Polish, German, etc.
• In Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season SCION controls nine European nations, not all of them named (Britain, Ireland, France, Greece, Serbia and Sweden are). How much autonomy the various countries' governments have isn't really gotten into although Britain and Ireland are completely under its control.
• In the Left Behind series, most of continental Europe becomes the United European States during the time of the Tribulation, with Greece and Romania becoming part of the United Carpathian States.
• Alternate History classic For Want of a Nail depicts this as a minor detail to its main focus (North America following a failed American Revolution) when the German Empire conquers continental Europe and the Middle East during the Global War.
• Europe is, for all intents and purposes, one political entity in Vladimir Vasilyev's Wolfish Nature. This is in contrast to the US (Alaska split off), Canada (split in two), and Russia (Siberia split off). Additionally, there's a Middle Eastern Coalition of sorts, and a barely-mentioned nation called Sinojapan.
• Gareth L. Powell's AcK Ack Macaque series takes place in an Alternate History with a European Commonwealth dominated by the United Kingdom of Britain, France, Northern Ireland and Norway.
• Zigzagged in Wolfgang Jeshke's The Cusanus Game. In the main timeline the EU is falling apart in 2052. However Austria-Hungary exists once more and has annexed Slovenia and parts of northern Italy. In the alternate timeline there is a United Europe consisting of everything west of Russia and the Dardenelles which is highly isolationist.
• Implied to be the case in the first Arrivals from the Dark novel, where the three power blocs that finance the United Space Forces are the United States and Canada (USC), the Eurasian Union (Russia), and the EU. China, the Middle East, and the rest of the world are kept out of space. This trope then flows into One World Order between the first and second novels (a 37-year gap), where the UN is turned into the more powerful World Parliament. Later, this lays the foundation for the Earth Federation, as humanity expands to other star systems and establishes colonies.
• In The Dark Forest, when Luo Ji awakens 200 years in the future, it is mentioned that all of Europe has merged into the European Commonwealth (except for Belarus, which was annexed by Russia).
• In the Terra Ignota series, which takes place in 2454, citizenship is always voluntary, rather than determined by birth, and geographic nations have been replaced by large global organizations called Hives due to easier travel. However, one of these is the still-existing European Union, often referred to simply as "Europe" by the characters. It holds many of the people who still have an interest in identifying with a traditional nationality.
• Legend Series has the whole European continent being forced to merge together after the polar ice caps melted and submerged many parts of its territories. Europe is now a developing country, and many European refugees are moving to Africa in search of a better life.
• By the far future of The Lunar Chronicles, the European Federation (comprising continental Europe and Greenland) is one of six megacountries formed after World War IV.

Live-Action TV

• Star Trek: The Next Generation has mentioned both a United States of Europe and a European Alliance.
• Moonbase 3: The European Community has far greater political authority than it did in real life at the time of the series' production in 1973. There is frequent talk of the Assembly which controls the funding of Moonbase 3 and to which it is answerable. This does not seem to be an elected body. (The real life European Parliament was established in 1952 but did not become a directly elected body until 1979, six years after the series was made.) As such, it is probably more similar to the United Nations General Assembly than the modern incarnation of the European Parliament. Furthermore, the series correctly predicted that there would be a single European currency - which it calls the Euro dollar - by 2003. Unlike the real one, however, this fictional Eurozone includes the United Kingdom.
• In FTL Newsfeed, international politics is dominated by multinational unions, one of which is the European Community (as it was called when the show was made).

Tabletop Games

• White Wolf's Scion RPG, though set in the present day, actually has EU Armed Forces, which the EU does not have although whether it should remains a matter of discussion. In all fairness, said EU Armed Forces were in a story in which the end of the world was in full swing and it is entirely possible that such a situation might cause a united response from Europe.
• The main superpower of the world in Cyberpunk 2020 (by virtue of both economics and a huge lunar-based railgun of mass destruction) is an expy of the EU.
• Transhuman Space has an expanded EU (including Montreal), but only slightly increased powers (the main one being the Genetic Regulation Agency, which polices the Europe-wide ban on bioroid slavery). Several sourcebooks note that Europe has very few federal powers.
• In Steve Jackson Games' wargame OGRE, the Paneuropean Federation is this. In the Expanded Universe, its conquest of Britain is a major turning point, because this gives it the designs to create the eponymous supertank.
• Partially averted in Ground Zero Games' 'verse (used for the miniatures games Full Thrust, Dirtside II and Stargrunt II: Europe has actually split into the New Swabian League (Germany and Austria), the Federal States of Europe (France, Spain, Italy), and the Scandanavian Federation (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and a reluctant Finland). Britain, meanwhile, is part of the New Anglian Confederation (which also includes the US and Canada).
• Neo Tech has a European superstate (and a separate Scandinavian Union, and Madagasque superpower, but that's a different story entirely).
• The cyberpunk setting Neurospasta has a politically united EU, along with a coalition of Middle-Eastern states and an economic alliance of eastern Pacific nations, as the new world superpowers, having backed the correct form of sustainable energy in the wake of a global ecological catastrophe. The USA, which supported the technology that didn't become standard, has become isolationist and largely irrelevant to the world stage.

Video Games

• The Hearts of Iron II mod Modern Day Scenario has an event where the EU unites to one country as well... it also becomes a hyperpower the moment that happens since you get way more production/resources/manpower/research than anyone else...
• The EU from Battlefield 2142.
• The Battlefield 2 expansion Euro Force features an EU Army, which implies a somewhat more unified Europe than today.
• In the Front Mission franchise, the "European Commonwealth" is the oldest superstate (the others being the OCU which includes most nations of the Pacific Ocean, and the USN, which is the US except that now all of the Americas are part of it) in Front Mission 4, its leaders are presented as fairly incompetent, and in Front Mission 3, which happens after FM4, Europe is presented as an economical superpower, but do not act directly in the story.
• In Tom Clancy's EndWar, the European Federation is one of three playable factions, being thrown into World War III because of the Russians tampering with a European satellite.
  • Interestingly enough, the only major countries left outside the EF are the New Commonwealth (the result of Ireland and the UK leaving the Union) and Switzerland.
• The "Next War" mod for Civilization IV, included in the Beyond the Sword expansion, being basically Nineteen Eighty-Four scenario but with another state, has one of the four global factions of the far future be "Europa". It doesn't include Britain, which is part of America Inc., but does include some typically non-European countries, namely Algeria and Turkey.
• Subverted in Civilization: Beyond Earth. Though relatively unscathed during the Great Mistake, the European Union was hit badly by the humanitarian crises that followed and it eventually dissolved, but the European nations went on to form new alliances. France, Spain, the Mediterranean countries and north Africa formed a cultural hegemony (indicatively named Franco-Iberia) and became a traditionalist "New Rome" with shimmering cities and a thriving new culture. A new populist party named INTEGR^note (Initiative für Nachhaltige Technologien, Effizienz, Gerechtigkeit und Rechtschaffenheit - "Initiative for sustainable technologies, efficiency, justice, and righteousness") swept into power in Germany and turned the country into a high-tech, socially progressive, eco-friendly powerhouse. Faced with the threat of rising sea levels, the UK, Ireland and the Nordic countries formed their own union, the North Sea Alliance, pooling their resources and shared engineering and maritime heritage to rebuild coastal cities like London and Copenhagen into visionary semi-mobile floating city platforms.
• Mass Effect 2 gives this a nod - Earth is still run by various nations, but the only powers ever talked about are China, an expanded and reorganized United States of America (now including Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean islands), and the European Union. By 2186, the United Kingdom is implied to still be a seperate entity from the European Union however.
• A mod for Europa Universalis 3 allows you to create the European Union by taking control of the capitals of the EU as it is right now (that is, Lisbon, Madrid, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin...). Uniting Europe is also a common goal for veteran players.
• The United States of Europe in Endgame. However, the characters obviously have American accents.
• In Fallout, the European Commonwealth is clearly an analogue to the real-world European Union, except it seems to be a much stronger military alliance rather than the Union's focus on economic cooperation.
• One of the main factions in Command & Conquer (2013), with their appearance and game-play style making them a Captain Ersatz of the first game's USA faction, after fan hatred saw the U.S. getting terrorized and retreating from Europe to secure the home-front in the first game's expansion pack.
  • In the (official) backstory of the Tiberium universe, the Allied Nations basically became this, and eventually, the GDI, after Stalin's assault forced them to band together.
• In the Earth 2150 series, the Eurasian Dynasty is a united Europe and Asia.
• It's not stated in Shattered Union, but the forces sent to the Divided States of America to stop the civil war are made up of units from various European countries under a single command structure.
• A post-Brexit EU (although it's called the "ECA"^note European Continental Alliance) appears as the "green supertech" faction in the C&C Generals Game Mod Rise of the Reds. In a bit of a Take That!, Brexit only happened around last week sometime in a game set in 2045-ish, and the EU collapsed and re-formed in that time frame. Two of the ECA's three sub-faction commanders are Englishmen who wish the UK was still part of it.
• In Terra Invicta the EU at the start of the game roughly reflects the real world post-Brexit situation with the current EU nations being part of a federation (there are some minor differences due to some smaller European nations being merged for simplicity). However it is possible for the player to influence them and cause them to unify into a single nation. Additionally countries that are part of Europe but not in the EU such as the UK, Norway, Ukraine, Iceland, and parts of the Balkans can also be bought in to the EU federation and eventually unified into the nation.
  • Later technologies allow the EU to expand eastward incorporating Turkey, Belarus, Russia and a number of other nations in that area.
  • Due to how the game handles unification it's possible to take advantage of chain-unification to get some rather odd areas into the EU. In particular by having the UK unify with the The Commonwealth and then unifying that into the EU you can get nations like Canada, Australia, and South Africa into it. It's even possible to make Alaska and Hawaii part of the EU via a somewhat complex chain of unification.

Webcomics

• In Girl Genius, the Wulfenbach Empire controls a large piece of Europe. How much is vague but apparently most or all of central and eastern Europe. In the novelization Agatha H and the Clockwork princess a footnote mantions that it stretches "from the Atlantic to Istanbul".

Web Original

• In Orion's Arm, not only does the US divide but the EU eventually develops into the European Federation, but that isn't mentioned much as most of the interesting stuff happens thousands of years after humanity is driven off earth.
• The German-dominated Greater European Economic Union or GEEU for short in Decades of Darkness unites most of Europe outside the Russian Federation.
• The German-controlled Northern European Alliance in Weimar World from AlternateHistory.com is pretty much this.

Real Life

• One newspaper opinion comic titled "Neue Weltordnung?^* New world order?" showed a pair of maps labeled 'before' and 'after', depicting the end of the Cold War. The first showed the patchwork of European countries abutting the Soviet Union, while the second showed a patchwork of ex-Soviet countries abutting the new European Union.
• Music critic and analyst Simon Reynolds said this of trance music in the early 2000s.
  ...there is a European soulfulness to trance... Listen to today's trance, and you think of the pristine beauty of a modern unified Europe — the high-speed trains, the pedestrian-only boulevards of city-center shopping districts.
• Had Franz Ferdinand of Austria lived to become Emperor of Austria-Hungary, his ambition was to reform it into the United States of Greater Austria, a federal nation consisting of 15 states drawn up along ethnic lines^note German Austria, German Bohemia, Bohemia, German Moravia, West Galicia (today the southern part of Poland), East Galicia (today part of Ukraine), Slovakia, Trieste, Trentino, Carniola (present-day Slovenia), Hungary, Croatia, Vojvodina, Transylvania, and Seklerland, with German-speaking enclaves within non-German territories also having their own legal status. Part of the motivation for the Serbian nationalists who assassinated him was a fear that this arrangement would satisfy the Serbs within the Austria-Hungarian Empire enough for interest in Serbian unification to wither away. Otherwise, the idea was understandably seen as heavily favorable towards the Austrian side, and it likely would've faced major opposition from Hungary had it reached the serious implementation stage.

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