European Communities

The European Communities (EC) were three international organisations that were governed by the same set of institutions. These were the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or Euratom), and the European Economic Community (EEC), the last of which was renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993 by the Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union. The European Union was established at that time more as a concept rather than an entity, while the Communities remained the actual subjects of international law impersonating the rather abstract Union, becoming at the same time its first pillar. In popular language, however, the singular European Community was sometimes used interchangeably with the plural phrase, in the sense of referring to all three entities.

The European Coal and Steel Community ceased to exist in 2002 when its founding treaty expired. The European Community was merged with the second and third EU pillars by the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009, finally allowing the European Union to move beyond being only a concept and to assume the shape of a legally incorporated international organisation with juridical personality, designated as the legal successor to the Community. However, the reformed EU has not become entirely unified, because Euratom, though governed with the EU by the common set of institutions, has been retained as an entity distinct from the EU, along with a number of other international entities, such as the European Investment Bank, the European University Institute, the European Stability Mechanism, and the Unified Patent Court.