Competition Policy

Abstract

The most obvious manifestation of the formation of a customs union is that the partner countries agree to abolish all tariff duties on trade with each other. Hence Article 13 of the Treaty of Rome required the member countries to abolish all customs duties on trade with one another, in a series of steps of 10 per cent of the initial tariff level, between 1 January 1959 and 31 December 1969. For once the declared intentions of politicians bore a close resemblance to what subsequently occurred; indeed, by July 1968, eighteen months ahead of schedule, the final tariff reduction was applied. From that date onwards all duties on trade between member countries were abolished and a common external tariff on trade with non-member countries was established. (The only, rather sad, exception to this generalisation is that the common tariff is not applied to trade between East and West Germany; the latter, declining to accept the partition of Germany as a legal reality, to this day has officially no imports from East Germany. Goods passing from East to West Germany and then subsequently travelling elsewhere in the Community, however, are then subjected to the common external tariff.)