EEC Founded: Europe's Economic Union Takes Shape

Six nations signed away a piece of their sovereignty and created the institution that would eventually become the European Union. On March 25, 1957, West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg signed the Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Economic Community. The treaty created a common market with free movement of goods, services, capital, and people among member states, the most ambitious experiment in economic integration since the Roman Empire. The EEC was born from the rubble of two world wars. French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman had proposed pooling European coal and steel production in 1950 to make another Franco-German war "not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible." That idea became the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, and its success convinced the six member nations that deeper integration was both possible and desirable. The Treaty of Rome went far beyond coal and steel. It established a customs union that eliminated internal tariffs over a 12-year transition period, created the European Commission as an executive body, and set up the European Court of Justice to enforce community law above national law. The treaty also included provisions for common agricultural and transport policies, and it created the European Investment Bank to finance development in poorer regions. Britain, notably, declined to join, dismissing the project as an idealistic continental scheme that would never rival the Commonwealth. Within a decade, the EEC's economic growth was outpacing Britain's, and London began the first of several attempts to join. The EEC expanded to nine members in 1973, became the European Community, then the European Union in 1993, growing to 28 members before Brexit reduced it to 27. The Treaty of Rome's six original signatories built something that reshaped the continent more thoroughly than any army.