An economic organization of European states set up by the Treaties of Rome in March 1957. Its member states agreed to coordinate their economic policies, and to establish common policies for agriculture, transport, the movement of capital and labour, and the erection of common external tariffs, with the ultimate goal of political unification. The EEC provided an extension of the functional cooperation inaugurated by the European Coal and Steel Community (made up of Belgium, France, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands). It owed much to the campaigning initiative of Jean Monnet and to the detailed planning of Paul-Henri Spaak. Preliminary meetings were held at Messina in 1955, which led to the Treaties of Rome in 1957 and the formal creation of the EEC in January 1958. Cooperation in the EEC was most organized in the area of agriculture, and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was the largest item in the EEC budget. The Institutions of the EEC merged with those of the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) and the European Coal and Steel Community (ESCA) in 1967 to form the European Community (EC).