Role of EFTA in European Integration

The process by which separate economic territories merge in order to form larger units has been sustained over a long period of time. In Europe, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, countries attempted to consolidate the numerous customs territories contained within their frontiers. France, under Louis XIV, was divided into three main customs districts; the Austrian Empire was divided into six customs territories, not counting six again in Hungary; Holland contained two customs territories until 1861; in Switzerland the last of the cantonal tariffs was not abolished until 1874.1 The gradual integration of these national economies was, for the most part, accomplished by the beginning of the nineteenth century when, for the first time, economic frontiers coincided more or less with political frontiers. In one unique case the economic frontier exceeded the territory covered by individual political frontiers—the Zollverein—but by 1871 the political frontier had been stretched to cover the economic one, and the unity of the nation-state, from both the economic and the political points of view, was achieved.