ABSTRACT
Although the ECSC, the EEC and Euratom were originally endowed with separate institutions, following changes in the structure in the intervening years (as seen in Chapter 1), by the time the Single European Act came into effect in 1987, it was correct in both a practical and formal sense to say that there was a single institutional framework comprising the European Parliament, the Council, the Commission and the Court of Justice: Article 4 EEC. The Maastricht Treaty preserved this unitary framework (Article 4 (now 7) EC) and added the Court of Auditors, first established in 1975, as a fifth Community institution within the first pillar.
