Magazine / Politics / European Identity / Background | 22/03/2007

50 years Treaties of Rome

50 years after the Treaties of Rome were signed the European Community appears largely to have achieved its peacekeeping aims. A summary of the path and goals of the EC.

The weather forecast for Rome reported continuous rain for 25 March 1957. Shortly before 6 p.m., the parties concerned met on Capitoline Hill. Passing the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, they entered the Palazzo dei Conservatori. In the opulently decorated Hall of the Horatians and Curiatians, the representatives of six governments sat down to set Europe onto a new path.

Signing of the Treaty of Rome, 25 March 1957
Photo: European Community

The monumental Baroque statues of Pope Urban VIII and Pope Innocent X oversaw the ceremony from each side. The document was signed on behalf of Belgium by Paul-Henri Spaak, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Baron Jean-Charles Snoy et d'Oppuers, Secretary General of the Ministry of Economics; on behalf of France by Christian Pineau, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Maurice Faure, his state secretary; on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Walter Hallstein, State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; on behalf of Italy by Prime Minister Antonio Segni and Gaetano Martino, Minister of Foreign Affairs; on behalf of Luxembourg by Joseph Bech, State Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Lambertus Schaus, Luxembourg's ambassador to Belgium, and on behalf of the Netherlands by Joseph Luns, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Johannes Linthorst Homan, the director for the integration of the European Coal and Steel Community in the Dutch Ministry of Economics.

To highlight the historic importance of the moment, Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Martino, claimed that a new era in the history of the people of Europe is about to start.[1] The signing of the Treaties of Rome – the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community and the Treaty establishing the European Atomic Energy Community EURATOM – was an unprecedented event in the history of Europe. It was at most wishful thinking on the part of the politicians at the time that the signing ceremony in Rome might actually make history. First it had to prove itself in the decades to come.

For five decades after the signing of the Treaties of Rome, the vision of constructing European integration based on the idea of peace in Europe has been fruitful. Supranational European institutions have been established; they are not perfect but numerous and sufficiently complex. The unification of the internal market took longer than expected when the Treaties were signed in Rome. The euro, the European currency, is now in use. The euro was formally introduced and is in use in thirteen countries (since the beginning of 2007 Slovenia is the first post-communist country to use the euro); nine other EU countries participate in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism; 14 countries in the African CFA-Franc-Zone have linked their currencies to the euro. A coherent foreign and security policy is now being called for. When European integration and transatlantic relations drift apart, all sides suffer, as the Iraq crisis in 2002 and 2003 clearly showed.[2] In several rounds of enlargement the European Economic Community has grown into the European Union. Widening and deepening have never insurmountably challenged each other – in fact, they tend to reinforce each other.[3]

Although the institutions of the European Union have been established, the "idea of a European Constitution” and a "sense of a Pan-European common good” are still in the fledging stage. This dilemma couldn't have been more apparent than during the 2004 ratification crisis surrounding the proposed European constitution.[4] The document, intended to reform the European Union, was signed in a great ceremony on 29 October 2004. Some political leaders proudly presented it to their people to vote on in a referendum and promptly had to pay the price for it. Both in France and the Netherlands the majority of people voted against the European Constitution as the treaty is called colloquially. At the end of the day it does not matter whether they voted against the actual text of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, against their national governments, against the possible consequences of globalisation, or simply against politics in general. However, the constitution had been ratified in 16 other countries by the beginning of 2007. They constitute the majority of EU member-states and represent the majority of EU citizens (as citizens of EU member-states have been considered since the Treaty of Maastricht has been in force). Many EU citizens oppose the European constitution arguing that the EU is in a bad state, far removed from the people, undemocratic, and non-transparent – conditions that could be remedied with the help of a few important new rules that the proposed European constitution intended to introduce. Some think that integration is going too fast while others believe that it is heading in the wrong direction or going too slow.

Europe has been at a turning point since the beginning of 2007.[5] The previous reasons for European integration, i.e., establishing and maintaining peace in Europe by developing a functional common internal market, have largely been fulfilled. The new justification which refers to Europe's role in the world and a European Union supported by its citizens is still in its infancy. Currently the EU is undergoing a phase of transformation from integration as a project orchestrated by various government bodies to recognition and acceptance of the European Project by its inhabitants. Obviously, the task is a hard one, with a number of contradictions. The proposed European constitution, having been developed by more people than had ever previously been involved in a reform project of the EU, and at the same time being criticised for not having been sufficiently democratic in its creation, can only mark a step on the way. It provides for the possibility of holding Europe-wide referendums. More than any other previous draft and theoretical debates of the issue, it thus paves the way for the great idea of a European public. At the same time, the majority of people in two EU member-states refused their approval because they did not really feel democratically represented in the treadmill of the European Union. Life with these kinds of contradictions is and remains difficult but all we can do is to continue on the path the Treaties of Rome have paved. They introduced a new reality in the history of Europe.[6]

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