One of the most divisive subjects on the board. Depending on who you ask, the EU is either:

1. A horrific end-of-times gargantuan monster, which is only prevented from exercising its neo-Communazi totalitarian rule upon the oppressed peoples of Europe because its evil will to dominate all life is matched by its bureaucratic incompetence and corruption; or
2. The best thing since sliced bread, the Final Perfect Society in which the outdated and genocidal notions of the nation state and the race is finally defeated by the lovely happy community of peoples who all like cheese, and any nation that remains apart from it for more than 4.3 seconds will inevitably crash and burn into irrelevant bankruptcy.

As one can imagine, these two opposing views lead to considerable…“debate” (by the AH.com definition, see also Gun Control “debates” and Universal Healthcare “debates”), as well as division within the two sides for the reason to support/oppose the EU. Possibly the only thing that can unite the two sides against another viewpoint is when someone (usually a non-European) goes off on a bizarre right-wing fantasy tangent about how Teh Evol Muslims will overthrow the EU and turn it into the Inevitablid Caliphate any day now.

Because of British naming conventions, most British people refer to the EU as either the 'European Community' or the 'Common Market', two of the organisations that were combined into the EU in 1992.

Aside from the Inevitablid Caliphate, two common (and opposing) FH Cliches about the EU are:

1. The EU will turn into a fully integrated superpower, possibly including European Russia after China inevitably gets the rest, which will surpass the USA and perhaps even beat it in a world war.
2. Disagreements over the level of EU integration lead to a European Civil War in which nuclear weapons are used, and the resulting wrecked continent is of course taken over by the Russians, Chinese, Evil Muslims, or some combination of the three.

In Star Wars fandom the 'Expanded Universe' (i.e. the Star Wars universe in novels and so forth outside the film series) is commonly abbreviated to EU. In Thande's AH.com Wars, this is parodied by having extra-filmatic material referred to as “European Union books”.