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One of the definitions for the word “UNION” reads:

1 [count] : an organization of workers formed to protect the rights and interests of its members *

* Source: Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary

Well, then let’s protect the rights and interests of the European Union members – or at least that is what I think it is expected to happen.

Note: most of the texts and ideas expressed here refers to languages, particularly to the European languages.

Three letters for EU

While building this site in a multilingual manner and because I was forced to use three letters for country code in order to differentiate the URL country code from the URL language code, I faced a problem: what should be the three-letter country code for the EU ? I mean the ISO 3166-1 aplha-3 codes . As far as I can tell, the ISO country codes standard deals with “countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geopolitical interest”.

Note: the term “geopolitical” is used in the actual text of the ISO 3166‑1:2014 standard, a detail that is omitted (or ignored ?) in Wikipedia description.

Finding nothing, I ended up using the “EUE” European Union laissez-passer user assigned code, only because I had to use something.

I was thinking that the European Union aspires to be recognized – sometimes in the future – as a state, more or less like the 3-letters USA. Or not ?

 Knock, knock, ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency. 

 

EU