It was written by a council chaired by Étienne Davignon of the Belgian Foreign Office.
The committee was appointed by the Council of the European Communities to make proposals on political cooperation between the member states.
Since the end of World War II, sovereign European countries have entered into treaties and thereby co-operated and harmonised policies (or pooled sovereignty) in an increasing number of areas, in the European integration project or the construction of Europe (French: la construction européenne).
The following timeline outlines the legal inception of the European Union (EU)—the principal framework for this unification.
The EU inherited many of its present responsibilities from the European Communities (EC), which were founded in the 1950s in the spirit of the Schuman Declaration.