ABSTRACT
The European Economic Community was created in 1958 against the backdrop of the more ambitious proposals in the mid-fifties for European political and defense communities. European integration was to evolve principally on the economic plane. The number of external contacts of the Community which were formalized through international agreements has grown and runs into the hundreds. The Community also has an equally impressive network of international contacts through legations. While Community activity in the field of external economic relations found its basis in the treaties themselves, foreign policy proper was, as have seen, excluded from the Community process. There was a multiple rationale for the creation of the Framework. The "objective" reason was of course rooted in the claim that given the actual state of internal European integration, the failure to operate in the field of foreign policy was a waste of a significant potential.
