overy in Western Europe could never have been carried through as successfully or as quickly as it was without the massive and generous assistance that came from across the Atlantic.
11. But the countries of Western Europe felt the need for something more than this, for closer co-operation among themselves to re-establish collective defence arrangements against threats from outside Western Europe, to prevent future wars between European nations, and particularly to replace their economic rivalry with a more productive collaboration. This deeply-felt need for closer co-operation amongst European nations gave rise successively to the Brussels Treaty Organisation (later known as Western European Union)*, the Council of Europe, and the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), all established in the four years after the war.
12. These new European organisations provided new means of consultation and co-operation among sovereign European states; but they did not meet in full the need of the continental nations of Western Europe for greater security and prosperity. They decided that this could come only from a more effective pooling of their economic resources. It was to meet this need that in 1951 the European Coal and Steel Community and in 1957 the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community were founded by France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. In establishing the Communities as the means for increasing economic integration and unity of action by the member states, provision was also made for the overseas countries associated with them to have associate status with the Economic Community with preferential advantages in the development of trade and aid. The Communities together formed a European economic grouping of some 180 million people, with a further 70 million people in their associated states, mainly in Africa, in close economic relationship with them.
Purposes of the Communities
13. These, broadly, were the origins of the Communities. Their purposes are set out in their basic documents, notably the Treaty of Rome, by which the major organisation, the EEC was established. The preamble to the Treaty of Rome lists the basic objectives of the Community. These include the establishment of the foundations of an ever closer union among European peoples, the furtherance of economic and social progress by elimination of the barriers which divide Europe, improvement of the living and working conditions of its peoples, progressive abolition of restrictions on international trade and development of the prosperity of associated overseas countries. The second Article of the Treaty affirms that the task of the Community is "by setting up a common market and progressively approximating the economic policies of member states, to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living, and closer relations of the member states ". These are objectives to which this country can wholeheartedly subscribe.
* WEU soon merged its defence arrangements with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the basis of the Western Alliance.
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