The Western bloc formally came under the common platform of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was founded in 1949 with 12 countries in Europe and North America–Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the US. By 1955, Greece, Turkey and West Germany joined it. The Eastern bloc formalised their alignment under the Warsaw Pact of 1955, with East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania joining hands with the Soviet Union.