ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU), as we now know it, fi rst began life as three separate legal Communities in the 1950s. First, six countries set up a Community to cooperate in the area of coal and steel. They formed the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 by adopting the European Coal and Steel Community Treaty (also known as the Treaty of Paris, where it was signed). Then two further ‘Communities’ followed in 1957, one in the area of atomic energy and the other a more general ‘economic Community’, but which used more or less identical institutions and methods.
