European Economic Community (EEC), organization established (1958) by a treaty signed in 1957 by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany (now Germany); it was known informally as the Common Market. The EEC was the most significant of the three treaty organizations that were consolidated in 1967 to form the European Community (EC; known since the ratification [1993] of the Maastricht treaty as the European Union). The EEC had as its aim the eventual economic union of its member nations, ultimately leading to political union. It worked for the free movement of labor and capital, the abolition of trusts and cartels, and the development of joint and reciprocal policies on labor, social welfare, agriculture, transport, and foreign trade.

In 1958, Britain proposed that the Common Market be expanded into a transatlantic free-trade area. After the proposal was vetoed by France, Britain engineered the formation (1960) of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and was joined by other European nations that did not belong to the Common Market. Beginning in 1973, EFTA and the EEC negotiated a series of agreements that would insure uniformity between the two organizations in many areas of economic policy, and by 1995, all but four of EFTA's members had transferred their memberships from EFTA to the European Union.

One of the first important accomplishments of the EEC was the establishment (1962) of common price levels for agricultural products. In 1968, internal tariffs (tariffs on trade between member nations) were eliminated and a common external tariff was fixed. For subsequent developments, see European Union.

later European Community (EC) known as the Common Market

Association of European countries designed to promote European economic unity. It was established by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 to develop the economies of the member states into a single common market and to build a political union of the states of western Europe. The EEC also sought to establish a single commercial policy toward nonmember countries, to coordinate transportation systems, agricultural policies, and general economic policies, to remove measures restricting free competition, and to assure the mobility of labour, capital, and entrepreneurship among member states. The liberalized trade policies it sponsored from the 1950s were highly successful in increasing trade and economic prosperity in western Europe. In 1967 its governing bodies were merged into the European Community. In 1993 the EEC was renamed the European Community (EC); it is now the principal organization within the European Union.

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