ABSTRACT
The European Economic Community (EEC) might have broken up during the first year of operation. On June 1st 1958, five months after its foundation, de Gaulle became prime minister president of France. As it completed the customs union, the EEC worked with the US in the Kennedy Round of global General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade(GATT) negotiations, which resulted in a further 25 per cent cut in the common external tariff. The EEC's economic success highlighted the lack of political cooperation among the Six on foreign affairs which had not been included in the Rome treaty. At the head of the European Commission for the EEC's first nine years was Professor Walter Hallstein, formerly a close aide of Adenauer. In the 1960s and 1970s the common agricultural policy(CAP), with its system of common prices and unlimited production guarantees for farmers, transformed agriculture in the EEC. The Community responded for economic development and institutional reform for Poland and Hungary.
