Western Europe is the region comprising the westerly countries of Europe. While the term has a geographic context, another main definition developed during the Cold War (approx. 1945-1991) to describe the countries associated with the Western European Union (1954–2011; now part of the European Union (EU)), a defensive alliance drafted in 1948 among non-communist European nations during the Cold War, as opposed to the countries of the Eastern Bloc (or Warsaw Pact). Countries culturally and geographically associated with other European regions that steered clear of Soviet influence during the Cold War are usually included, while western members of the former Eastern Bloc (with the exception of Eastern Germany) are excluded.
Countries described as Western European are invariably high-income developed countries, characterized by democratic political systems, mixed economies combining the free market with aspects of the welfare state, and most are members of NATO and the EU.
The United Nations (UN) Statistics Division considers Western Europe to consist of just nine countries, although the United Nations Regional Groups include European countries from the UN-designated Northern and Southern Europe in its Western European and Others Group.
Read more about Western Europe: Population of Western Europe, United Nations
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... War II period, when Soviet conventional forces in Europe greatly outnumbered the West's ... War II-like sustained conventional bombing raids on Soviet air bases in Eastern Europe ... for followup attacks) envisioned Western forces in Europe slowly retreating while the United Kingdom was reinforced as an air base for atomic attacks on the Soviet Union ...
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... Around 1241, the Kingdom of Hungary was much like any other feudal kingdom of Europe although the throne was still inherited by Árpád's successors, the king's authority and power was greatly ... He also asked the papacy and the Western European rulers for help ... troops retreated Austria shortly thereafter to "enlist more Western help." The Hungarians now stood alone in the defense of their country ...
... Further information Genetic history of Europe The Portuguese are a Southwestern European population, with origins predominantly from Atlantic Europe, Western Europe and the Western ... the Portuguese, like other population groups from the western and central regions of the Iberian Peninsula, are an Atlantic Celtic people who have been very substantially "Romanized" over time ... to have been a major Ice-age refuge from which Paleolithic humans later colonized Europe ...
... The United Nations Statistics Division published in 2011 considers Western Europe to consist of the following nine countries, except in the case of United ...
Famous quotes containing the words europe and/or western:
“It is not unkind to say, from the standpoint of scenery alone, that if many, and indeed most, of our American national parks were to be set down on the continent of Europe thousands of Americans would journey all the way across the ocean in order to see their beauties.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“It is fatally easy for Western folk, who have discarded chastity as a value for themselves, to suppose that it can have no value for anyone else. At the same time as Californians try to re-invent “celibacy,” by which they seem to mean perverse restraint, the rest of us call societies which place a high value on chastity “backward.””
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)