European Economic Community

The European Economic Community was an organization established by the 1957 Treaty of Rome and launched in 1958 to build a common market and integrate its members’ economies. It became part of the European Union’s legal and institutional framework in 2009.

Common market: An economic arrangement that removes barriers to trade and movement among participating economies. The EEC’s central objective was to establish this arrangement among member states.
Treaty of Paris: The 1951 treaty that established the European Coal and Steel Community among six Western European countries. Its sectoral integration provided an institutional precedent for the broader EEC.
Common Agricultural Policy: The European Union’s shared policy for supporting agriculture, managing markets, and developing rural areas. The EEC developed this major shared policy to integrate agricultural markets and support farmers.
European Free Trade Association: An organization founded in 1960 to promote free trade among European states outside the European Economic Community. Unlike the EEC, it did not initially establish a customs union or common external tariff.
Customs union: A trade area with no internal customs duties and a common external tariff. The EEC completed this foundation of its common market in 1968.
European Coal and Steel Community: A 1951 organization that placed the coal and steel industries of six countries under shared institutions. Its early economic cooperation helped prepare the way for the EEC.
Single European Act: The 1986 treaty that set a deadline for completing the European Community’s internal market and reformed its institutions. It accelerated the EEC’s common-market project and expanded majority voting.
European Economic Area: An arrangement extending much of the European Union’s internal market to Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway. It grants market access without making those countries members of the EEC’s successor institutions.
European single market: The integrated market that enables free movement of goods, services, capital, and people across participating European countries. It developed the EEC’s common-market project beyond the original customs union.
Messina Conference: A 1955 meeting of foreign ministers that advanced plans for European economic integration. Its proposals set negotiations in motion for the treaties that created the EEC and Euratom.

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