established. Six countries (France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland and Luxemburg belonging to ECSC signed the treaty of Rome which established the European Economic Community (EEC) or the European Common Market, with headquarters at Brussels. (c) European Economic Community (EEC) The EEC eliminated barriers to the movement of goods, services, capital, and labour. It also prohibited public policies or The World After World War II this context, East Germany began to construct a wall in which virtually cut off West Berlin from East Berlin and the surrounding East German areas.
It was heavily guarded with watch towers and other lethal impediments to stop people from the East. In the late 1980s, as USSR’s hold over Eastern European countries was weakening, a mass of people assembled on November on both sides of the wall and began to demolish it. Germany was officially reunited on October . The Berlin Wall was more than just a physical barrier.
It was a symbolic boundary between communism and capitalism. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War era came to an end. Demolition of Berlin wall Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of West Germany from to , and played a crucial role in integrating East Germany into West Germany in . He thus became the first chancellor of a unified Germany after forty five years of division.
With French president Mitterand, Kohl was the architect of the Maastricht Treaty, which established the European Union (EU) and the euro currency. Disintegration of the Soviet Union In the 1970s and early 1980s the Soviet Union continued to retain a strong and dominant position in international politics. However, its economy was suffering, and was unable to match the productive capacity of the First World. In , Mikhail Gorbachev took over as head of the USSR.
Gorbachev spoke about the need for openness (Glasnost) and reform (perestroika). But his commitment to reform, apart from opposition within the ruling communist party, did not match the resources