1. A union of independent countries, like the USA was a union of independent states when it started in history.
2. The Switzerland, because of its neutrality and the original democracy established in that state. The Swiss population is deciding most of laws subject to basic rights by majority decision of all inhabitants, instead of having elected politicians making the decisions, being actually in dictatorship of capitalism.
3. to explain this would actually exceed the time required for answering and therefore I refer to wikipedia in this exceptional case.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union</a><!-- m -->
4. the introduction of the Euro was necessary to get producers and consumers the same chances, as companies in the USA had. A company based in California can sell products in Florida without having additional costs of currency transfers. A European company in Spain had enormous additional costs selling products in Germany subject to different currencies. When I was a child, it amounted (converted to Euro) to 2,15 € to buy 1 US Dollar, today i have to pay just 0,63 €.
5. They have to come up on one side, but otherwise have it easier, since they can calculate their products just in one currency instead of having 15 different before.
