Flag of the Western European Union

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Flag of the Western European Union

Use	War flag and naval ensign.
Proportion	2:3
Adopted	1993
Design	A semicircle of 10 5-pointed gold stars on a blue field with white initials WEU and UEO in the centre.

The Flag of the Western European Union is dark blue with a semicircle of ten yellow five pointed stars, broken at the top, with the organisations initials in the centre. Although it is the flag of a military organisation, it has rarely been flown in military situations.

1 Design
2 Use
3 Previous designs
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Design

The flag is dark blue with a semicircle of ten yellow five pointed stars, broken at the top, with the white letters WEU horizontally across the centre and UEO vertically across the centre sharing the letter E with the former set of initials. UEO is the French and Spanish abbreviations for Western European Union. The flag's blue colour with yellow stars is taken from the Flag of the Council of Europe and European Union, however the number of stars is ten due to the WEU membership being of that number.

[edit] Use

The flag is rarely used, with the WEU being largely dormant and succeeded by the European Union's military activities. It was once flown onboard an operational United States Navy battleship, the USS John Rodgers, when it was used as the flagship of an Italian general (with a WEU crew) commanding WEU relief operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There are variants for its bodies, such as its assembly, used on formal occasions.^[1]

[edit] Previous designs

The current flag has only been in use since 1993. Prior to that there was a similar design but with only 9 stars (before Greece became a member) and the stars towards the base of the flag were progressively larger that those at the fringe. This design replaced an older version used since the WEU was founded, which was still dark blue but instead of stars, had five links forming an unbroken chain in the shape of an upside -own pentagon. There was a multicoloured border (red on the outside, gold, black and white) taken from the WEU member states' flags.