Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Economics - History, grade: 1,0, University of Pompeu Fabra, language: English, abstract: This article analyzes the history of European integration fromthe end of the Second World War until today. It focuses onthe di?erent enlargement steps and explains why the progressiveenlargement of the European community can be understood as amechanism with challenges and responses to internal and externaldevelopments. From this point of view the text has a closer viewon the reasons why speci?c countries decided to surrender a partof its national sovereignty to a supranational institution withinthe last sixty years.