Beginning soon after the end of World War II, the western nations discussed agreements to reduce tariffs for trade among themselves. In 1947, they entered into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in order to decrease tariffs that interfered with trade. This marked a significant change from how nations had used tariffs in the past to protect their domestic industries and raise revenue. Under GATT, western countries first froze the tariffs (preventing them from increasing) and later began reducing the tariffs. In 1995, this approach was taken one step further with the World Trade Organization (WTO), which included non-western countries and also established international courts for deciding trade disputes among nations. There are 150 members of the WTO today, and Vietnam (which the communists won by war in the 1970s) joined the WTO in 2007.
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Western European nations also joined the European Common Market after World War II, and then in 1958 joined the European Economic Community (EEC) to reduce tariffs among themselves. The EEC later became the European Union (EU), which includes all Western European countries except Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland, which has never joined anything and fiercely defends its independence, and also Iceland and Norway. In 2002, many EU countries began using a common currency known as the “euro”, but these EU countries use their own currency instead of the euro: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Notice from that list that how many Eastern European countries now belong to the EU now, but do not use its currency; many of them joined the EU in 2004. A map of the EU is to the right.
The large Muslim nation of Turkey requested to join the EU in 1987, but the EU has never allowed it to join. In 2005, the new Pope Benedict XVI of the Catholic Church emphasized the need to keep Europe Christian, and Muslim riots occurred in late 2006 when he repeated a controversial quote about Islam. One of President Barack Obama’s most significant statements after his election was to call for the inclusion of Turkey in the EU. But now, in 2014, Turkey itself does want to join the EU, and announced that it would not pay a fine imposed against it by the European Court of Human Rights based on an invasion in 1974 by Turkey of Cyprus. The EU is not as popular as it was a decade ago.