{"id":224332,"date":"2025-06-29T15:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T15:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/224332\/"},"modified":"2025-06-29T15:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T15:41:10","slug":"european-flag-celebrates-40-years-as-symbol-for-eu-and-predecessor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/224332\/","title":{"rendered":"European flag celebrates 40 years as symbol for EU and predecessor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n         Published on<br \/>\n            29\/06\/2025 &#8211; 17:21 GMT+2<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-ad__placeholder__logo\" src=\"https:\/\/static.euronews.com\/website\/images\/logos\/logo-euronews-grey-6-180x22.svg\" width=\"180\" height=\"22\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Europe is celebrating its flag:<\/p>\n<p>Twelve golden stars, explicitly, and in contrast to some national flags, not representing member states or units but &#8220;the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe&#8221;, how the European Commission<a href=\"https:\/\/european-union.europa.eu\/principles-countries-history\/symbols\/european-flag_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> website <\/a>puts it.<\/p>\n<p>In 1983, towards the tail end of its first legislature as a directly elected law-making body, the European Parliament decided to adopt it as the symbol of what we now know as the EU but was then still known as the European Communities.<\/p>\n<p>Two years later, the European Council, the representatives of the then ten member states, approved the decision and by 1986, having just been joined by Portugal and Spain, the flag &#8211; officially only called a &#8220;logo&#8221;, to avoid too strong connotations of nationhood &#8211; became widely used by the Communities and member states on official buildings, etc.<\/p>\n<p>However, that&#8217;s not where the story of the flag starts, which is now perhaps most powerfully applied as a symbol for freedom and self-determination by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euronews.com\/my-europe\/2025\/06\/24\/georgia-jails-opposition-figures-as-ruling-party-denies-arrests-are-politically-motivated\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>nations<\/strong><\/a> struggling  to achieve them.<\/p>\n<p>Design ideas had been floated even before WWII for a flag for a united Europe, and in its aftermath, naturally, even more so. They ranged from a green cross on a white background and vice versa, to a white triangle on a variety of backgrounds, and even a combination of all colours of all European flags in five fields, arrived at in painstaking statistical analysis by a citizen of Strasbourg.<\/p>\n<p>Neither of them were adopted, but it was in Strasbourg in 1953 that the now familiar flag was first proposed by members of the Council of Europe. The institution as a whole then adopted it in December 1955.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, it can celebrate another round birthday later this year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 29\/06\/2025 &#8211; 17:21 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT Europe is celebrating its flag: Twelve golden stars, explicitly, and in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[30222,48511,2000,299,5187,1699,2348,88537],"class_list":{"0":"post-224332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-anniversary","9":"tag-council-of-europe","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-history","15":"tag-symbolism"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114767415484598042","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}