Treaty of Rome

The Treaty of Rome, signed on 25 March 1957 and entering into force on 1 January 1958, established the European Economic Community (EEC). It was signed by six states: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany — the same six that had created the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951. A parallel treaty signed the same day created the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom); together these are sometimes called the "Treaties of Rome."

The EEC treaty's core objective was to build a common market with the free movement of goods, services, capital, and people (the "four freedoms"), a customs union with a common external tariff, and common policies in areas such as agriculture (the future CAP) and transport. It also established the founding institutions of the Community: the Commission, the Council, the Parliamentary Assembly (later the European Parliament), and the Court of Justice.

Article 2 set out the broad aim of promoting harmonious economic development and closer relations between member states. Article 237 created the procedure for admitting new members, while Article 177 (now Article 267 TFEU) established the preliminary reference procedure that allowed the Court of Justice to develop doctrines of direct effect (Van Gend en Loos, 1963) and supremacy (Costa v ENEL, 1964) of Community law.

The treaty has been amended repeatedly — by the Single European Act (1986), the Maastricht Treaty (1992), Amsterdam (1997), Nice (2001), and Lisbon (2007). Under the Treaty of Lisbon, the Treaty of Rome was renamed the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which remains in force today alongside the Treaty on European Union (TEU). The 60th anniversary in March 2017 was marked by the Rome Declaration of the EU-27, following the UK's Brexit referendum.