Treaty of Rome

The Treaty of Rome, signed on 25 March 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany, established the European Economic Community, the direct institutional ancestor of today's European Union. It created a common market among its six founding members, committing them to the progressive removal of tariffs and other barriers to the free movement of goods, and set out common policies in areas including agriculture and trade, along with shared institutions to govern the new community. The treaty entered into force on 1 January 1958 and, alongside the parallel treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community signed the same day in Rome, laid the legal and institutional groundwork on which subsequent treaties, including the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, built the modern European Union.