The 1957 Treaty of Rome and its successor treaties have developed a Community legal system distinct from that of its constituent states, but ‘nevertheless intimately and organically tied to it in such a way that the mutual and constant respect for the respective jurisdictions of the Community and national bodies’ is essential for the proper attainment of Community aims. Although this sui generis Community structure has limited the sovereign rights of the Member States in ever-widening fields, it operates as severable yet dependant upon a backdrop of autonomous, self-contained and functionally independent civil codes of national private law. Because the integration envisaged by the original Treaty structure relies on market forces and is powered by economic drive, the ‘four freedoms’ guaranteed by this structure – namely, the free trans-border movement of goods, services, people and capital – remain attainable without the complete substantive uniformity of national laws. Still, with further integration encouraging increased interstate transactions, and few substantive matters falling exclusively within the generaljurisdiction of the Community, legal dilemmas referencing diverse national laws hinder the operation of the internal market. Rather than eroding the sensitive national bulwark of substantive private law, however, the Community has often chosen to enact common rules on the conflicts of law to determine the reach of Community measures and their intersection with national substantive laws.