Treaty of Rome (1957): Founding the European Economic Community

The Treaty of Rome was signed on 25 March 1957 by Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC). A second treaty signed the same day created the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). The EEC set out to build a common market among the six, and through many later revisions the treaty became one of the foundations of today’s European Union.

Background: from coal and steel to a common market

The six signatories had already worked together in the European Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1951. Its success encouraged supporters of European unity, but plans for deeper political integration suffered a severe setback on 30 August 1954, when the French National Assembly rejected the treaty for a European Defence Community, which would have created a joint European army.

Many concluded that integration should proceed through economics rather than defence. Dutch foreign minister Johan Willem Beyen proposed a general common market covering all goods, while Jean Monnet and others favoured sector-by-sector cooperation, especially in atomic energy, which was then seen as the key to future power supplies.

The road to Rome

The foreign ministers of the six met at Messina, Sicily, on 1–3 June 1955. They agreed to study both a general common market and an atomic energy community. An intergovernmental committee chaired by Belgian foreign minister Paul-Henri Spaak then drafted detailed proposals.

The Spaak Report, presented in April 1956, recommended a customs union with common institutions and a separate atomic energy community. At a conference in Venice on 29–30 May 1956 the ministers accepted it as the basis for negotiation. Talks continued at Val Duchesse, a château outside Brussels.

Britain had sent a representative to the early Spaak committee meetings but withdrew in late 1955, doubting the project would succeed and preferring a broader free trade area. The negotiations were difficult. France demanded the inclusion of its overseas territories, protection for agriculture, equal pay for men and women, and social measures. The Suez Crisis and the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising in late 1956 helped persuade French leaders, especially Prime Minister Guy Mollet, that Europe needed to act together. A meeting between Mollet and Adenauer in Paris on 6 November 1956 resolved key differences.

The signing ceremony

The treaties were signed on the evening of 25 March 1957 in the Hall of the Horatii and Curiatii in the Palazzo dei Conservatori on Rome’s Capitoline Hill. Each country was represented by two plenipotentiaries:

• Belgium: Paul-Henri Spaak and Jean-Charles Snoy et d’Oppuers
• France: Christian Pineau and Maurice Faure
• West Germany: Konrad Adenauer and Walter Hallstein
• Italy: Antonio Segni and Gaetano Martino
• Luxembourg: Joseph Bech and Lambert Schaus
• Netherlands: Joseph Luns and Johannes Linthorst Homan

The treaties were then ratified by the six national parliaments during 1957 and came into force on 1 January 1958.

What the EEC Treaty set up

The EEC Treaty’s preamble declared the signatories “determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”. Its practical core was economic.

• A customs union: Tariffs and quotas on trade between members were to be removed in stages over a transition period of 12 to 15 years, and a common external tariff applied to imports from outside.
• The “four freedoms”: The treaty aimed at the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital.
• Common policies: It provided for a common agricultural policy, a common transport policy and common rules on competition.
• Social provisions: Article 119 established the principle of equal pay for men and women for equal work, and a European Social Fund was created.
• Overseas association: Colonies and overseas territories of member states, mainly French and Belgian territories in Africa, were associated with the Community and received development funds.
• Finance: A European Investment Bank was set up to fund projects in less developed regions.

The Euratom Treaty aimed to develop a common nuclear energy industry, coordinate research and ensure the supply of nuclear fuels. It proved less influential than the EEC, as member states kept tight control of their own nuclear programmes.

Institutions

The EEC adopted a structure modelled on the ECSC but with greater power for governments:

• The Commission, an independent executive based in Brussels, which proposed laws and enforced the treaty. Walter Hallstein was its first president (1958–1967).
• The Council of Ministers, representing member governments, which took the main decisions.
• The Assembly, shared with the ECSC and Euratom, made up of national parliamentarians; it later became the European Parliament.
• The Court of Justice, also shared, which interpreted the treaty and in the 1960s established the principles that Community law takes effect directly in member states and prevails over national law.

By the numbers

Consequences

The treaty’s early years coincided with rapid growth across the six countries, sometimes called the “golden age” of the post-war European economy. Firms began to plan for a larger market, foreign companies, especially American ones, invested inside the common external tariff, and trade between the members grew far faster than their trade with the rest of the world. Economists still debate how much of this growth was caused by the EEC itself, but they agree that it reinforced the shift of Western European trade towards the Continent.

Trade among the six grew rapidly once internal tariffs began to fall in 1959, and the customs union was completed ahead of schedule on 1 July 1968. The common agricultural policy, agreed in principle in 1962, became the largest item in the Community budget for decades.

The EEC’s success reshaped Europe. Britain and six other countries formed the rival European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960, but Britain applied to join the EEC in 1961. French president Charles de Gaulle vetoed British entry in 1963 and 1967, and it was only in 1973 that the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark joined, as described in UK joins the EEC.

The relationship between national governments and the Commission also produced conflict. In 1965–66 France boycotted the Council in the “empty chair crisis” over majority voting and agricultural finance, which ended with the Luxembourg Compromise allowing a member to invoke a “very important” national interest.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Treaty of Rome founded the European Union. The EU itself was created by the Maastricht Treaty, which came into force in 1993. The Treaty of Rome created the EEC, one of the communities on which the EU was later built.

Myth: there was one Treaty of Rome. Two treaties were signed in Rome on 25 March 1957, one creating the EEC and the other Euratom; “Treaty of Rome” usually refers to the EEC Treaty.

Fact: the signing was partly symbolic. It is widely reported that, because of the rush to finish the texts, many of the pages signed at the ceremony were blank apart from the title page and the signature pages, with the full printed text added afterwards.

Legacy

The Treaty of Rome has been amended many times, by the Single European Act of 1986, the Maastricht Treaty, the Amsterdam and Nice treaties and the Treaty of Lisbon. Since 2009 its successor text has been called the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Its common market eventually became the single market and, for many members, led to the introduction of the euro.

Historians have interpreted the treaty in different ways. Some emphasise the idealism of federalists such as Spaak and Monnet. Others, notably Alan Milward, argue that national governments used European integration to strengthen their own welfare states, agriculture and industry, so that the Community “rescued” rather than replaced the nation-state.

The anniversary of the treaty has been marked by EU leaders, including with the Berlin Declaration in March 2007 for the fiftieth anniversary and in Rome in March 2017 for the sixtieth, when leaders signed the Rome Declaration in the same hall on the Capitoline Hill.

Timeline

• 1954, 30 August: The French National Assembly rejects the European Defence Community.
• 1955, 1–3 June: The Messina Conference launches talks on a common market and atomic energy.
• 1956, April: The Spaak Report is presented.
• 1956, 29–30 May: The Venice Conference accepts the Spaak Report as the basis for negotiations.
• 1957, 25 March: The EEC and Euratom treaties are signed in Rome.
• 1958, 1 January: Both treaties come into force.
• 1959, 1 January: The first internal tariff cuts take effect.
• 1968, 1 July: The customs union is completed.

Why it matters

The Treaty of Rome moved European integration from coal and steel to the economy as a whole. It created the institutions, the common market and the long-term ambition of “ever closer union” that shaped Western Europe for the rest of the twentieth century, and its text, much amended, still forms one of the two core treaties of the European Union.