European Economic Community, (EEC, Common Market), an international state-monopoly association set up in 1957 by six West European countries—France, the FRG, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg—with a view to uniting their national markets into a single one in order to raise the profits and increase the competitive ability of their monopolies. In 1973, the EEC was joined by Britain, Denmark and Ireland, and in 1981, by Greece. The economic objectives of the community were: free movement of goods, capital and labour power within the EEC, unification of prices and duties, coordination of foreign-trade policy, etc. In the late 1960s, customs duties and quantitative restrictions were abolished in the trade between the EEC countries, a uniform customs tariff towards the third countries was introduced, a single agrarian market set up and steps were taken to unify the systems of taxation and establish a European currency system. The EEC has been quite successful in setting up a customs union, but the establishment of the economic and currency coalition, which demands a coordinated economic policy, is hampered by serious contradictions between the countries, which have intensified in the setting of the crisis of the capitalist currency system, and particularly the 1974-75 world overproduction crisis. From the very start, the founders of the Common Market planned not only the economic integration of West European countries but also a political alliance. In this connection, the EEC was viewed as the economic basis for a further military and political consolidation of the West European countries and for forming a political union closely associated with NATO. The subsequent development of the Common Market saw a clash between two bourgeois concepts of the community’s political prospects, this reflecting the profound contradictions between the financial oligarchy of the EEC member states. The formation and further expansion of the EEC reflect an objective process— the internationalisation of modern productive forces, but the imperialist contradictions between its members and between the EEC and other imperialist centres are increasing, frequently leading to crises within the community and forcing its 127 individual members to go back on jointly adopted decisions. Initially, the sharpest contradictions existed between the monopoly capital of the FRG and France, but since the expansion of the community—between these two countries and Britain. Besides, the contradictions between the major European capitalist countries and the rest of the EEC members are also getting worse. The relations between the Common Market and the socialist countries will depend on how realistically the EEC member states estimate the situation in the socialist part of Europe and on their willingness to establish the equitable, mutually beneficial cooperation offered by the CMEA.