The Treaty of Rome 1957 Summary

• The Treaties of Rome 1957

The Treaty of Rome 1957 Summary: On 25 March 1957, the Treaties of Rome were signed, considered as the birth certificate of the great European family. The first establishes a  European Economic Community  (EEC), the second instead a European Atomic Energy Community, better known as  Euratom .

Initially developed to coordinate the research programs of States with a view to promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy, the Euratom Treaty now contributes to the sharing of knowledge, infrastructure and financing of nuclear energy.

What is European union?

• What is the European Union?

The European Union (EU) is an economic and political partnership of countries normally referred to as the ‘Member States’. Its only powers are those given to it by its Member States and it makes laws within these powers. It now has 27 Member States.

How the Treaties of Rome came about

The Treaties of Rome were the second great step forward in the process of European integration. The first had been completed six years earlier, on 18 April 1951, in Paris: that day the governments of France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – the same ones who later signed the Treaties of Rome – established the ECSC, the European Coal and Steel Community.

The idea underlying the ECSC had developed from a famous speech by the then French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman, who the previous year had spoken of the need to pool the industrial and mineral resources of France and Germany, one of reasons that had led the two countries to go to war. If exclusive control of these resources were taken away from the two governments, Schuman thought, it would be possible to avoid further wars in Europe.

The EEC Treaty brings together  France, Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries  in a Community with the aim, as stated in the art. 2, to create a common market and encourage the transformation of the economic conditions of trade and production in the Community.

But it also has a more political objective and that is to contribute to the functional construction of political Europe and a step towards a broader unification of Europe. As the signatories of the treaty declare in the preamble: “to be determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union between the peoples of Europe”.

The first articles (of the 240 in total) of the Treaty clearly identify that the main mission of the Community is the creation of a  common market   by specifying which actions – and in what timeframes – the Community will have to undertake to fulfill its mandate.

But the Treaty also abolishes  customs duties  between states, establishing a common external customs tariff which replaces the previous tariffs of the various states, a sort of external border for the products of third states. And it involves the development of common policies such as agricultural policy (the famous CAP), trade policy and transport policy.

The  European Social Fund is also created, with the aim of improving workers’ employment opportunities and their standard of living, and a European Investment Bank is established, intended to facilitate the economic expansion of the Community through the creation of new resources.

Many innovations also on the institutional front with the creation of the  Commission  (later European Commission), a  Council of Ministers  (later European Council) and a Parliamentary Assembly  (later European Parliament). It is the adoption of a new balance based on a “triangle” where the institutions are required to collaborate with each other: the Commission issues the rules, the Council prepares the proposals, the Parliament has a consultative role.

The treaty also provides for the establishment of a Court of Justice.

Article 12 of the treaty of Rome

• European discrimination law

From the beginning, the Treaty of Rome addressed discrimination in relation to nationality and gender. Initially this stemmed from concerns that market integration would be undermined if free movement of labour was limited by discrimination based on nationality between citizens of member states. Article 6 of the Treaty of Rome (now Article 12 EC) prohibited any discrimination on the grounds of nationality of a Member State.

To supplement this, a Regulation was made in 1968 (Regulation 1612/68). This made detailed provision in relation to all aspects of discrimination against Member States’ nationals (and their families) when exercising their rights to move freely around the EU in order to work. Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome (the precursor to Article 141 EC) gave women and men the right to equal pay for work of equal value.

The Rome treaty international criminal court

• The Treaties setting out the EU’s powers

The EU is not a single political unit based on a single international treaty. The EU is a complex legal structure based on a number of different interconnected treaties that have evolved over time. The pace and destination of this evolution has affected the way in which European equality law has developed, so it is worth providing a summary of how this complex legal structure has evolved. The starting point is the Treaty of Rome in 1957.

This created the ‘European Economic Community’ (EEC) to ‘ensure the economic and social progress’ of Member States as well as the ‘constant improvement of their living and working conditions’.

Read more history  of France

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