EU Treaties: the rules that shape Europe

An EU treaty is a legally binding agreement between all EU countries. These treaties set out the rules of the EU – how it works, what it can and cannot do and how decisions are made. The first major milestone came in 1957 with the Treaty of Rome. The Treaty established the European Economic Community, which aimed to forge closer ties between European economies and remove barriers to trade. It did not yet create the EU as we know it, but it laid the foundations for it. In 2007, came the Lisbon Treaty, the EU’s most recent update.