Category talk:Member states of the European Union

(The following discussion was at Category talk:EU countries, a category which has since been deleted. -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 18:45, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC))

Naming of category
I object to the naming of this article. It should be titled "EU member states" if people really want just the 25 member pages to link to it. Otherwise, England, Scotland and Wales should be linked here, as well as Ireland (island of).

Another problem, Republic of Ireland is not the official name of the state. Éire, or Ireland is the official name. Republic of Ireland is merely an official description. Now that is used commonly for most purposes, but for EU treaties for example, they always are signed by "IRELAND" not "Republic of Ireland". Thus, the member should be listed as Ireland, not Republic of Ireland.

Zoney 11:20, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * The Category:Countries was created and is today holding political entities, i.e. sovereign states, in its hierarchy. However, there is a point that by countries could also be understood countries which are not nation states, as exemplified above. Changing the name of this category would solve the problem here, but it would potentially lead to confusion at Category:European countries, if non-independent or non-united countries were listed there. Wouldn't there be a way to solve the problem with out changing all categorization of country articles and subcategories under the Countries category.
 * The non-independent countries, like England and Scotland, are contained within one sovereign state and belongs under that category, in this case the United Kingdom. Non-united countries like Irland are the real issue here. Since Ireland is not a single united political entity, it would need to be specified in what sense is a country; historically, culturally, geographically and/or others? Examples of other non-united countries in Europe and elsewhere should also be taken into account otherwise the whole discussion would be moot. Categorizing it in a way as to where only Ireland would fit, would take the meaning out of this discussion.
 * I believe that the naming related to Ireland used in the Wikipedia articles should also work for the categories. The issue of naming the articles should be raise there, not here. -- Mic 17:51, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree the general case is a difficult issue - there's always plenty of confusion arising in sports teams, for example, over what constitutes a 'country' (and 'nationality'). For the EU though, member states solves the problem and is the official/correct terminology, so I'd also support a name change here. -- EuroTom 04:57, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * Yes - in case I wasn't clear - I consider renaming to EU member states the best solution. It doesn't entirely solve the question of Ireland - but I guess the Rep. of Ireland article and not Ireland (the official name of the State used in EU treaties) will have to be linked. Bah! Zoney 11:02, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

The European Union and the Council of Europe
The European Union is independent of the Council of Europe and membership in one isn't contingent on membership in the other. (I'm not even sure that the point about membership contingency is relevant. Even if there were a contingency, it would still be circumstantial: the organizations could repeal such a rule at will.) If, as it says at the latter article, "No country has ever joined the EU without first belonging to the Council of Europe", that's de facto and still doesn't imply that the EU is subsumed under the Council. In view of those circumstances, why is this category a subcategory of Category:Member states of the Council of Europe?

For what it's worth, what led me here was seeing that User:Buidhe has just removed countries from the parent category, which I presume is because they're in the subcategory. (I'm not sure that that action was correct anyway, if that was the reason for it, because this category isn't a diffusing subcategory of the other one. Largoplazo (talk) 13:36, 29 January 2022 (UTC)


 * The requirement of membership in the CoE to join the EU is sufficient to categorize the latter countries as a subset of the former. It is also doubtful that Council of Europe membership is defining for EU member states due to the low profile of the organization. I've checked, and most articles of EU countries only mention Council of Europe membership in one sentence in the body, which indicates it is not defining for them. (Arguably, the CoE membership is more important for states that are not EU members like Russia, Turkey, or Azerbaijan). (t &#183; c)  buidhe  18:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)