Treaty of Rome

Signed by the leaders of Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands on March 25, 1957, the Treaty of Rome is the founding text of the European Union. In fact, not one but two ambitious treaties were signed at the Palazzo dei Conservatori that day: one establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the other creating the European Atomic Energy Community. Whereas the latter did not fulfill its promises, the EEC treaty laid the groundwork for the most successful project of regional integration in the history of humankind. Entered into force on January 1, 1958, the EEC treaty provides the legal basis for the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people in a common market of 450 million people. It has put the European Union at the vanguard of globalization forces.

The negotiations that led to the Treaty of Rome were an attempt to rejuvenate the process of European integration after the failure of the European Defense Community, in 1954. Throughout the post–World War II decade, West European states were under intense pressure to work together in order to rebuild their economies and jointly face the Soviet threat. Coming after the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation and the European Coal and Steel Community, the Rome treaty was meant to strengthen economic and political ties among countries that were increasingly aware of their interdependence. In particular, Germany wanted international legitimacy and a stable export market for its manufactured goods, while France wanted to tie the Federal Republic to the Western camp and gain support for its agricultural sector. The United Kingdom, which initially supported the European Free Trade Area—an alternative, more modest project—joined the EEC in 1973.

The main contours of the treaty were established by a group led by Belgian foreign minister Paul-Henri Spaak. From an economic point of view, the signatories of the Treaty of Rome promoted a kind of “coordinated capitalism.” The EEC was about more than free trade. While trade barriers were gradually removed in the 1960s, a strong system of regulation and a fairly protectionist customs union were put in place. Like the European Coal and Steel Community, the EEC treaty implied some delegation of national authority to the Court of Justice in Luxembourg and a newly created European Commission in Brussels. It even contained embryonic supranational principles, such as the European Commission's exclusive right of initiative in certain legislative areas. Today, most EU “directives” are adopted by a qualified majority of member-states. With 27 member-states and an increasingly powerful European Parliament—the only directly elected supranational legislature—the European Union is the most integrated regional organization in the world.

Although these peculiar institutions of regional governance have attracted much attention, it is perhaps the provisions on “free movement” that [Page 1681]make the Treaty of Rome particularly interesting for global studies.

The EEC treaty established the free circulation of goods, which meant the gradual removal of all custom duties and quotas among EEC countries. Simultaneously, external trade tariffs had to converge toward a single customs union. This is the heart of the common market. In the 1979 Cassis de Dijon case, the Court of Justice interpreted the treaty as implying a principle of “mutual recognition”: Any good that is legally marketed in an EU country can be sold without restrictions throughout the common market. In contrast to a free trade area, however, trade liberalization went hand in hand with a set of positive measures, such as common competition rules, labor standards, and the framing of a common commercial policy to deal with third countries.

...