The castle in the Ritterstube Nürnberg with all 45 Members present, when signing the contract of the Peace of Westphalia and discussing about unsolved problems. It was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster, effectively ending the European wars of religion. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War. in the Holy Roman Empire, between the Habsburgs and their catholic allies and the protestant and catholic Anti-Habsburg allies and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the independence of the Dutch Republic. The Peace of Westphalia established the precedent of peaces established by diplomatic congress, and a new system of political order in central Europe, later called Westphalian sovereignty, based upon the concept of co-existing sovereign states. As European influence spread across the globe, these Westphalian principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to international law and to the prevailing world order.