Treaty of Rome (1957)

The Treaty of Rome refers to the treaty establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), signed on 25 March 1957 in Rome and entering into force on 1 January 1958. 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 established the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom); together the two instruments are sometimes called the "Treaties of Rome."

The EEC Treaty aimed to create a common market with the free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital — the so-called "four freedoms" — alongside a customs union with a common external tariff. It also committed members to common policies in agriculture (the future Common Agricultural Policy) and transport, and to the progressive approximation of national laws. Institutional architecture included a Commission, a Council of Ministers, a Parliamentary Assembly (later the European Parliament), and a Court of Justice, building on ECSC precedents.

The treaty's preamble invoked an "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe," language that has remained politically and legally significant. Through later amending treaties — the Single European Act (1986), Maastricht (1992), Amsterdam (1997), Nice (2001), and Lisbon (2007) — the original EEC Treaty was repeatedly revised. Lisbon renamed it the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which together with the Treaty on European Union (TEU) forms the EU's current primary law.

For IR students and MUN delegates, the Treaty of Rome matters because it:

• Operationalised supranational economic integration after the failure of the European Defence Community (1954).
• Embedded the principle of direct effect later articulated by the Court of Justice in Van Gend en Loos (1963).
• Provided the legal scaffolding on which monetary union, enlargement, and the single market were eventually built.