[1] Its European territory extends northeast to Finland, northwest to Ireland, southeast to Cyprus and southwest to the Spanish exclaves on the Mediterranean shores of North Africa.

Additionally, the EU includes numerous islands around the world, and French Guiana in South America.

With overseas territories included, the European Union is shored by the Indian and Pacific Oceans as well as by the Caribbean Sea.

Several overseas territories and dependencies of various member states are also formally part of the EU (for Spain: the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla; for Portugal: the Azores and Madeira; for France: Réunion, French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Mayotte and Saint Martin) while in other cases territories associated with member states are not part of the EU (for Denmark: Greenland and the Faroe Islands; for the Netherlands: Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten; for France: French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna or New Caledonia).

The geology of Europe is hugely varied and complex, and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, like the rolling plains of Hungary.

The climate is strongly conditioned by the Gulf Stream, which warms the western region to levels unattainable at similar latitudes on other continents.

The heaviest precipitation occurs downwind of water bodies due to the prevailing westerlies, with higher amounts also seen in the Alps.

As for the land on the European continent, the mildest climate occurs in the northwest part of Iberian Peninsula (also Spain and Portugal), between Bilbao, A Coruña and Porto.

The most important rivers in the European Union are Danube, Rhine, Elbe, Oder, Vistula, Seine, and Rhône, among others.

Densely populated regions that have no single core but have emerged from the connection of several cities and are now encompassing large metropolitan areas are Rhine-Ruhr having approximately 11.5 million inhabitants (Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund et al.), Randstad approx.

The legal basis of EU environmental policy was not more explicitly established until the introduction of the Single European Act in 1987.

The role of the EU in securing the ratification and entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol in the face of US opposition is an example in this regard.

This international dimension is reflected in the EU's Sixth Environmental Action Programme, which recognises that its strategic objectives can only be achieved if a series of key international environmental agreements are actively supported and properly implemented both at an EU level and worldwide.

In 2007, member states agreed that the EU is to use 20% renewable energy in the future and that it has to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 by at least 20% compared to 1990 levels.

[18] This includes measures that in 2020, 10% of the overall fuel quantity used by cars and trucks in EU 27 should be running on renewable energy such as biofuels.