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European Community
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The European Community (EC) was originally founded on March 25, 1957 by the signing of the Treaty of Rome under the name of European Economic Community. The 'Economic' was removed from its name by the Maastricht treaty in 1992, which at the same time effectively made the European Community the first of three pillars of the European Union, called the Community (or Communities) Pillar.
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European Communities was the name given to the European Economic Community (EEC), the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) collectively, when, in 1967, their organs were merged with the Merger Treaty. The term now technically only refers to the EEC and Euratom, as the ECSC expired in 2002.
Soon after the establishment of the ECSC two more European Communities were proposed the European Defence Community and European Political Community. These were later rejected.
The EEC, established in 1958, soon became the most important of these three communities. Subsequent treaties gave the EEC coverage beyond purely economic concerns. The other two communities, on the other hand, remained extremely limited. The ECSC ceased to exist when the Treaty of Paris, which established it, expired in 2002. Seen as redundant, no effort was made to retain it. Its assets and liabilities were transferred to the EC, which also gained control of coal and steel.
With the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty in November of 1993, the European Economic Community changed its name and became the European Community. The European Community, along with the ECSC and Euratom, became known as the European Communities and, together with the two other pillars, became collectively known as the European Union.
The European Economic Community (EEC) was an organization established by the Treaty of Rome (25 March 1957) between the ECSC countries: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany, known informally as the Common Market (the Six). The EEC was the most significant of the three treaty organizations that were consolidated in 1967 to form the European Community (EC; known since the ratification 1993 of the Maastricht treaty as the European Union, EU). The EEC's immediate aim was economic union of its member nations, with the eventual goal of political union. It worked for the free movement of goods, service, labor and capital, the abolition of trusts and cartels, and the development of joint and reciprocal policies on labor, social welfare, agriculture, transport, and foreign trade. See Customs Union.
In 1956, the United Kingdom proposed that the Common Market be incorporated into a wide European free-trade area. After the proposal was vetoed by President Charles de Gaulle and France in November 1958, the UK together with Sweden engineered the formation (1960) of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and was joined by other European nations that did not belong to the Common Market (the Seven). Beginning in 1973, with British, Irish, and Danish accession to the EEC, the EFTA and the EEC negotiated a series of agreements that would ensure uniformity between the two organisations in many areas of economic policy, and by 1995, all but four EFTA members had joined the European Union.
One of the first important accomplishments of the EEC was the establishment (1962) of common price levels for agricultural products. In 1968, internal tariffs (tariffs on trade between member nations) were removed on certain products.
The Maastricht treaty turned the European Communities as a whole into the first of three pillars of the European Union, also known as the Community Pillar or Communities Pillar. In Community Pillar policy areas decisions are made collectively by Qualified Majority Voting (QMV).
The term European Communities refers collectively to two entities — the European Economic Community (now called the European Community) and the European Atomic Energy Community (also known as Euratom) — each founded pursuant to a separate treaty in the 1950s. A third entity, the European Coal and Steel Community, was also part of the European Communities, but ceased to exist in 2002 upon the expiration of its founding treaty. Since 1967, the European Communities have shared common institutions, specifically the Council, the European Parliament, the Commission and the Court of Justice. In 1992, the European Economic Community, which of the three original communities had the broadest scope, was renamed the "European Community" by the Treaty of Maastricht.
The European Communities are one of the three pillars of the European Union, being both the most important pillar and the only one to operate primarily through supranational institutions. The other two "pillars" — Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Police and Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters – are looser intergovernmental groupings. Confusingly, these latter two concepts are increasingly administered by the Community (as they are built up from mere concepts to actual practice).
If it had been ratified, the proposed new Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe would have abolished the three-pillar structure and, with it, the distinction between the European Union and the European Community, bringing all the Community's activities under the auspices of the European Union and transferring the Community's legal personality to the Union. There is, however, one qualification: it appears that Euratom would remain a distinct entity governed by a separate treaty (because of the strong controversy the issue of nuclear energy causes, and Euratom's relative unimportance, it was considered expedient to leave Euratom alone in the process of EU constitutional reform).
The signed but unratified European Constitution would merge the European Community with the other two pillars of the European Union, making the European Union the legal successor of both the European Community and the present-day European Union. It was for a time proposed that the European Constitution should repeal the Euratom treaty, in order to terminate the legal personality of Euratom at the same time as that of the European Community, but this was not included in the final version.
Evolution of the Structures of European Union
| 1951/1952 | 1957/1958 | 1965/1967 | 1992/1993 | 1997/1999 | 2001/2003 | 2007/2009 ? |
| European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) | ||||||
| Euratom (European Atomic Energy Community) | ||||||
| European Economic Community (EEC) |
European Community (EC) | |||||
| ...European Communities: ECSC, EEC (EC, 1993), Euratom | Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) |
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| Police & Judicial Co-operation in Criminal matters (PJCC) |
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| Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) | ||||||
| E U R O P E A N U N I O N ( E U ) | ||||||
| Treaty of Paris | Treaty of Rome | Treaty of Brussels | Treaty of Maastricht | Treaty of Amsterdam | Treaty of Nice | Reform Treaty |
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"THREE PILLARS" - ECs (ECSC, EEC/EC, Euratom), CFSP, PJCC |
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- History of the European Union
- European Union
- European Union law
- European Energy Community
- "Common European Home"
- European Union website
- Treaty establishing the European Economic Community European NAvigator
- History of the Rome Treaties European NAvigator
- Europedia: Guide to European policies and legislation
