The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 28 European countries. The population is 508 million people, 24 official and working languages and about 150 regional and minority languages. The origins of the European Union come from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), consisting of six states in 1951 - Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. These countries came together to put an end to the wars that devastated the European continent, and they agreed to share control over the natural resources needed for war (coal and steel). The founding members of ECSC have determined that this European project will not only be developed in order to share resources or to prevent various conflicts in the region. Thus, the Rome Treaty of 1957 created the European Economic Community (EEC), which strengthened the political and economic relations between the six founding states. The relevance of the topic stems from their desire of peoples and countries to live better. The purpose of the study is to identify the internal and external development mechanisms of European countries and, on this basis, to formulate a model of economic, legislative and social development for individual countries. The results of the study provide a practical guideline for determining the vector of the direction of efforts of political, economic, legislative, humanitarian, etc.

The leading countries have taken the direction of the vector towards digitalization. In the CIS countries, this direction means “digital economy”, but in other countries, it is Industry 4.0 (Germany), in the USA — Industrial Internet Consortium. In fact, this is one and the same process — the translation of the economy into a digital mode, technology, an algorithm for expressing phenomena and actions, goods and services, thoughts, artificial intelligence, etc. Other countries went further by announcing the development of strategy 5.0 (Japan) or 6.0 (China). Many countries do not have rich natural resources, so they completely depend on the quality of education of the new generation, and it needs to be prepared for revolutionary changes. Therefore, the emphasis is on children — this is our future — the theme is as relevant as ever. Humanity is subject to a number of shocks. They are reducing the number of employees, aging populations, declining global competitiveness of production, the need to upgrade infrastructure, environmental problems, lack of natural resources, issues of tackling natural disasters and countering terrorism. There was a necessity to create a universal concept that would go beyond sectoral problems and respond primarily to social needs and needs.