The Treaty of Rome — A Step Toward a Common Market

Until now, we have followed the path of those who tried to build a system in which France and Germany could never again go to war, by jointly managing two materials: coal and steel. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), born in 1952, was an unprecedented experiment in which states entrusted part of their sovereignty to a common institution, if only in a limited field. But coal and steel alone cannot keep an entire economy turning. In time, people stepped into a far larger question: could the market itself be made one? In this episode, centered on the two treaties signed in Rome in 1957, we trace neutrally how the grand vision of a common market took shape, and what ideals and difficulties it carried.

The Road to Rome — What Lay Beyond the ECSC

The ECSC was a successful experiment. Yet its very success is said to have left people feeling that something was missing. Even integrating the two fields of coal and steel still left trade and industry as a whole divided along national borders. Jean Monnet and others who had led integration are said to have believed that the venture should advance into broader fields.

The turning point came at the 1955 conference of the six foreign ministers held at Messina in Italy. There, the nations are reported to have confirmed a direction of pushing economic integration further forward. At the center of the discussion was the Belgian statesman Paul-Henri Spaak. The report bearing his name (the Spaak Report) is said to have become the basis for the negotiations that followed, sketching out two pillars: a common market and cooperation in the field of atomic energy.

The road to this point, however, was not smooth. Just before, in 1954, the more ambitious vision of a European Defence Community (EDC) had collapsed when the French parliament refused to ratify it. Integration touching the very core of sovereignty — the military — was too heavy a load for the nations of the time. After that failure, people sought once more to rebuild integration from the economic field, where agreement came more easily — that is one way to see it.

Two Treaties — The EEC and Euratom

In March 1957, the six countries of France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg signed two treaties in Rome. One was the treaty establishing the European Economic Community (EEC); the other was the treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). Together, these two are sometimes called the ‘Treaty of Rome.’ The following year, in 1958, both treaties entered into force, and the new communities began to move.

It was the EEC that took the leading role. Its treaty consisted of some 250 articles in all, setting out as its aims the formation of a common market, the economic growth of the community as a whole, the raising of living standards, and the closer relations among member states. By binding economies together, political reconciliation would be made all the more secure — the idea of functional integration, carried through ever since the ECSC, runs through here as well.

The other body, Euratom, was a framework for jointly advancing the peaceful use of atomic energy. Postwar Europe was troubled by energy shortages, and great hopes are said to have been placed on jointly developing atomic energy, which was still full of promise at the time. That said, owing in part to the differing interests of the nations and to later divergences in policy, Euratom is a field of which it is often remarked that it never grew into as great a presence as the EEC.

The Customs Union — The Idea of a Market Without Borders

At the foundation of the common market the EEC aimed for lay a mechanism called the customs union. It consisted of two promises. One was to remove tariffs and quantitative restrictions among the member states. The other was to establish a common tariff (the common external tariff) toward countries outside the bloc. Tear down the inner walls, align the outer wall — and so treat the six countries as if they were a single market.

This was not merely a technical matter of trade. If goods could move back and forth without being stopped at borders, businesses could trade with a wider market, competition and the division of labor would advance, and the whole economy was expected to grow lively. In fact, the customs union is reported to have been completed in 1968, ahead of the original schedule, and the six countries experienced high economic growth in this period. Integration and prosperity advanced hand in hand — a bright chapter even in the history of integration.

In addition, the EEC treaty had written in a greater ideal still: the free movement not only of goods but of people, services, and capital. Even so, the realization of these would come much later. At the time they remained at the stage of principles held aloft, and many non-tariff walls still remained in the actual market. Between the ideals raised and the reality underfoot, there was a great gulf.

A Community That Began to Run — Institutions and Sparks

The Treaty of Rome also put in place the institutions for running the enterprise. A commission that proposed policy and represented the community’s interest; a council that brought together the positions of the member states; a parliamentary assembly made up of legislators from each country; and a court that presided over the interpretation of the treaty — the skeleton that would be handed down to the later EU began, little by little, to show its form in this period. The institutions, which had been divided among several communities, were brought together into one in 1967, and efficiency of operation was pursued.

The community that had begun to run carried, alongside its brightness, sparks as well. How to handle agriculture, for instance, was a hard problem. Each country had its own farmers, and the urgent matter of the stable supply of food. From there, attempts to assemble a common agricultural policy began, but it would in time grow into a great point of contention over the community’s budget and the tug-of-war among nations. This theme we will look at in detail in the next episode.

Even so, the breadth of the horizon that the Treaty of Rome opened up in European history is worth confirming anew. Countries that had once faced one another on the battlefield chose to lower the boundaries between them at the level of daily economic life — the level of tariffs — and to grow prosperous together. That fact itself was one form of the original wish never to go to war again. The deeper economic ties became, the less the cost of war was worth it. Plain, but a strong logic lay here.

And so the community of six countries came to possess the persuasive power of prosperity. Then, countries wishing to join its circle from the outside began to appear. In particular, a great power across the sea, which had at first kept its distance, began to change its attitude. Yet that door did not open easily. Next time, we will trace the maneuvering over enlargement, and the community’s path as it welcomed in new countries.