Click any step to jump to it - the lit step is the one showing below. The EU deepens and widens for decades, then Brexit shows integration can reverse. Green = expanded or strengthened · Amber = mixed or contested · Red = restricted or weakened.
Timeline tucked away while you test yourself. Close the quiz to bring it back.
What happened. The European Coal and Steel Community formed with six founding members.
What it shows. The first step toward European integration. ECSC formed
What happened. The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community, a common market.
What it shows. Integration deepening beyond coal and steel. Treaty of Rome
What happened. The Maastricht Treaty created the European Union and the framework for the euro.
What it shows. A leap from economic community to political union. Maastricht creates EU
What happened. The euro launched electronically in 1999 and as cash in 2002, now used by twenty members.
What it shows. A shared currency removing a core state power. Euro launched
What happened. Ten states, mostly former Soviet-bloc, joined the EU in its largest enlargement.
What it shows. Widening integration across the old divide. Eastern enlargement
What happened. Bulgaria and Romania joined, but work rights elsewhere were delayed until 2014.
What it shows. Enlargement tempered by resistance to migration. Bulgaria and Romania
What happened. The Treaty of Lisbon expanded qualified majority voting, cutting national vetoes.
What it shows. Deepening at the expense of state sovereignty. Lisbon expands QMV
What happened. Brexit: 51.9% of UK voters chose to leave the EU, the only state to do so.
What it shows. Sovereignty overriding integration - a major setback. Brexit vote
What happened. The UK formally left the EU in January 2020, an economic blow to the bloc.
What it shows. Regional integration proving reversible. UK leaves the EU
What happened. AUKUS, an Australia-UK-US security pact, centred on nuclear submarines to counter China.
What it shows. A new security regionalism beyond the EU model. AUKUS pact
Roll up and down: use the arrows, scroll or swipe inside the box, the up and down keys, or click any step in the arc above.
For sixty years the European story was one direction: deeper (Rome, Maastricht, the euro, Lisbon) and wider (the 2004 and 2007 enlargements). Integration looked like a one-way ratchet.
Brexit broke that assumption - a major member left, proving integration can reverse. Meanwhile AUKUS shows regionalism continuing in a different, security-based form outside the EU, so the picture is mixed rather than simply stalling.
The same events split by side. Build each paragraph around one point from each column, then judge.
Treat the EU as the deepest case of integration and Brexit as the proof it can reverse, then judge whether regionalism overall is advancing or fragmenting.
For "is regionalism deepening?", set the EU's deepening and widening (Rome to Lisbon) against Brexit and looser blocs (AUKUS), then judge whether integration is inevitable or conditional.
Use the EU as your supranational example and AUKUS as intergovernmental - that contrast in type, not just degree, earns AO2.