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The European Union emerged in the 1950s from a vision of a bright future for a war-ravaged continent \u2013 free from conflict, with nations living in harmony, their citizens free to trade and travel without restriction. In the first programme of a three-part series, former BBC Europe correspondent Allan Little hears first-hand from the negotiators who drew up the project\u2019s founding document, the Treaty of Rome, with its key goal of an \u201cever-closer union\u201d.

The interviews for this series were recorded ten years ago and many of the interviewees have since died.

(Photo: Foreign Ministers of France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Germany and Italy signing two treaties establishing the European Common Market and the atomic energy community at Campidoglio, Rome, 25 March1957. Credit: Keystone/Getty Images)