Treaty of Rome

The Constitutive Agreement of the European Economic Community, the precursor to the current European Union, was signed in 1957 and entered into force on January 1, 1958, by France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. This treaty extended cooperation among the signatory states to economic sectors beyond coal and steel, sectors in which they had already been collaborating since 1951 through the ECSC (European Coal and Steel Community). The treaty eliminated trade barriers and created a common European market.