The European Commonwealth is the Fallout universe's equivalent of the real-world European Union, which has integrated into a single state-like entity throughout Europe; this was probably a federal union. It is, however, unknown which European states were members. In 2052, Europe was heavily dependent on oil imports from the petroleum-rich states of the Middle East and responded with military action to rapidly rising oil prices that were damaging its economy, starting the terrible global conflicts that later historians simply lumped together as the Resource Wars.