Institutions — Council and Court

Abstract

The drafters of the Treaty of Rome set out the main objectives of the Community in fairly general terms — the elimination of all obstacles to trade between the member countries, the establishment of a single customs tariff on trade with the rest of the world, the inauguration of common policies on agriculture and transport and so on — but were not foolish enough to attempt to legislate in detail on how these objectives were to be achieved in the inevitably changing world of the years ahead. Rather, they provided for the creation of a network of institutions in and through which detailed policies in these various fields would be formulated and administered. In this and the succeeding chapter the four major such institutions — the Council of Ministers, the Court of Justice, the Commission and the Parliament — will be examined and their roles clarified.