The European Communities (sometimes referred to as the European Community or EC) were three international organizations that were governed by the same set of institutions. These were the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom).
They shared the same governing institutions (those of the EEC) from 1967 until those institutions became those of the European Union (EU). The European Communities operated as the largest of the EU's three pillars until the EEC (renamed the European Community in 1993) was absorbed when the pillar system was abolished. The ECSC expired in 2002 but Euratom remains as a distinct entity, the only one of the three communities to exist beyond 2009.
Read more about European Communities: Institutions, Members, Policy Areas
Famous quotes containing the words european and/or communities:
“European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition—of intellectual activity, of letters—and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)