50 Years After the Treaty of Rome: From the Battlefield to the Conference Table
After a long and bloody history, Europe has made amazing strides in the last 50 years. But now the European Union is at a crossroads. Where will it go from here, and what do Europe's choices portend for the future of the rest of the world?
by Paul Kieffer
On March 25, 1957, the representatives of six Western European nations met in Rome to sign a treaty that has since shaped a new Europe from a divided postwar continent. When the treaty took effect on Jan. 1, 1958, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands became the European Economic Community (EEC).
After centuries of warfare and bloodshed, the Treaty of Rome was an ambitious step forward on the path to securing a peaceful future for Europe. The founding members agreed to develop an integrated economic zone with freedom of movement for financial capital, goods, services and people.
They also committed themselves to be subject to common policies for agriculture, competition, trade and transportation, with "community law" taking precedence over national law. The concept of supranational law was a major leap in a Europe made up of competing national states.
Those founding members may have been motivated by different viewpoints. Under President Charles de Gaulle, France might have seen itself as the potential leader of the new project. Germany and Italy could have looked on the EEC as a further step in their rehabilitation within the community of European nations. The Benelux countries tended to have open economies anyway, and the integration of Germany into a larger European context held the promise of protecting them from again being overrun and occupied by their much larger neighbor.
"An ever closer union"
The preamble to the Treaty of Rome invited other European countries to participate in the EEC, promising to "lay the foundations for an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe." Only 10 years after its start, EEC members achieved a customs union for a range of products that has since been expanded to be nearly all-inclusive.
