How come the flag has only twelve stars?
Description
This article is from the European Union FAQ, by Roland Siebelink & Bart Schelfhout with numerous contributions by others.
How come the flag has only twelve stars?
Questions that concern the European flag keep recurring. Especially since
the enlargement of the EU from twelve to fifteen member states, people are
wondering why there are still only twelve stars on the flag. The short
answer is mainly that the number of stars was never intended to correspond
to the number of member states; both just happened to be twelve between 1986
and 1994.
[IMAGE]
The flag with twelve gold stars in a circle on a blue background was
originally designed for the Council of Europe[10], founded in 1949. One of
the founding members of this organisation was the country of Saarland, which
had been part of Germany only since 1935, but was occupied by the French
after World War II. At the time of the foundation of the Council of Europe,
it was not at all clear whether Saarland (which was in the French zone of
the allied occupation forces) would retain its international status under
the custody of the United Nations, become part of France or rejoin Germany
[it finally chose the latter in a 1955 referendum].
To reconcile any possible differences over the sovereignty of Saarland, the
founding members of the Council of Europe decided not to have a number of
stars corresponding to the disputed number of founding states. Rather, the
number of twelve stars was chosen to be a symbol of completeness and of
unity, as it corresponded to the number of stars in the zodiac, the number
of months in the year and (for the purpose of winning over the mainly
Christian European people) to the number of Jesus's apostles. Thus the flag
of the Council of Europe still consists of twelve stars, even though it has
over thirty members now.
The then European Communities +borrowed; the flag of the Council of Europe
only in 1986, after its enlargement to twelve members. Thus, as far as the
European Communities are concerned, there was indeed a (coincidental)
correspondence between the number of member states and the number of stars
in the flag. Still the enlargement of the EU to fifteen member states has
provoked no changes in the number of stars on the flag; therefore, it must
be concluded that the number of twelve on both the Council of Europe's flag
and the flag of the European Union retains it symbolic value of completeness
and unity, rather than of the number of members.
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