The signing of the Rome Treaties

Meeting at 6 p.m. on 25 March 1957 in the Hall of the Horatii and the Curiatii in the Capitol in Rome, the representatives of Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands signed the Treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom). The signatories were: Paul-Henri Spaak, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Baron Jean-Charles Snoy et d’Oppuers, Secretary-General of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (Belgium); Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Walter Hallstein, State Secretary in the Federal Foreign Office (FRG); Christian Pineau, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Maurice Faure, Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (France); Antonio Segni, President of the Council of Ministers, and Gaetano Martino, Minister for Foreign Affairs (Italy); Joseph Bech, Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Lambert Schaus, Ambassador to Brussels (Luxembourg); and Joseph Luns, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Johannes Linthorst Homan, Head of the Netherlands Delegation to the Intergovernmental Conference on the Common Market and Euratom (Netherlands). In response to suggestions by the Italian press and despite the rain, a large crowd gathered in the piazza in front of the Capitol.

The work of drafting the final articles of the Treaties actually continued right up to the day on which they were signed. The final objections to the draft wording and the amendments tabled by some of the national delegations, with particular regard to the creation of organic links among the national parliaments, meant that a conference of the Foreign Ministers had to be held, under the special chairmanship of Baron Snoy, even during the morning of 25 March. At that same meeting, the Six also decided to set up an Interim Committee, under the chairmanship of Baron Snoy, instructed to carry out certain work and research in the period between the signing of the two Treaties and the establishment of the new institutions and to coordinate the action of the six governments, especially within certain international organisations. But these last-minute preparations made it impossible to agree on the final version of the Treaties, and it was for that reason that only the pages that were to be signed by the plenipotentiaries were actually finalised. The declarations and official speeches bear witness to the joy and pride of the participants, to whom the Mayor of Rome presented, to mark the event, a gold medal depicting Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf.

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