The European Community

Abstract

On 8 April 1965 the member states of the three European Communities signed the “Merger Treaty” for the amalgamation of the three European “Executives” — the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the Commission of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Commission of the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom) — into a single Commission of the European Communities. At the same time the three Councils of the three Communities were merged into one. Hence, since 1 July 1967 when the Merger Treaty came into force, the unified Commission of the European Commission has taken the only executive authority. Western European economic integration, however, started much earlier in the fifties, on a sectoral level.