The setting up of communities, acting through their own powers and with competences of which the national governments have divested themselves by treaty, clearly needs an appropriate institutional framework. The development of the European Communities, their day-today existence raise problems in human relations which are particularly complex and delicate because of the fact that the actual means of coercion: army, police, fiscal and customs authorities, remain in the hands of the national states, accustomed, through centuries of tradition, to enjoy absolute and unrestricted sovereignty.

These difficulties are increased by the addition of novelty : the impossibility of referring to precedent or to well-established practices, as national administrations or traditional diplomacy can do. Thus a new style of relations has had to be invented and applied, which would both help to foster the dialogue indispensable for the mutual understanding of the needs and legitimate aspirations of each of the national partners, and assist in bringing about solutions of common interest and in accordance with the letter and the spirit of the treaty.