Europe

Resources about Europe Go Premium That lovely, maddening, baffling place stretching from the arctic wastes to the sunny Mediterranean. Including Switzerland. And the UK. Click ᐅ to expand: Europe Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

Golly. Where to start.

You have your EU, your EEA, your European Free Trade Association and the European Single Market, and the Eurovision Song Contest, which somehow includes Israel and Australia.

And then geographical Europe, which is none of these things.

Note that Norway is not a member state of the European Union (EU), but is closely associated with the Union through its membership in the European Economic Area (EEA), in the context of being a European Free Trade Association (EFTA) member.

EFTA’s four member states are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

Switzerland is neither an EU or EEA member but is part of the single market - this means Swiss nationals have the same rights to live and work in the UK as other EEA nationals.

Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney (which is actually a part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey) (the Channel Islands) and the Isle of Man are self-governing Crown Dependencies of the United Kingdom but are not, even while the UK was, part of the EU, the EEA or EFTA. But they are, you know, European.

And then there’s the dear old United Kingdom. As of 29 March 2019, who knows where in the European firmament it will be? In the Eurovision, at least, you’d think.

See also

• Brexit means Brexit