The Treaty of Rome, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC), was signed in 1957 by the six original members: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany, the same group that had set up the Coal and Steel Community. The aim was economic integration among the six members, including a common market and a customs union.
That protection of personal information extends to ensuring the ability of law-abiding citizens to maintain their anonymity and addressing legitimate concerns surrounding the use of Big Data for personal profiling. Most importantly, empirical evidence suggests that the lobbying to abolish cash fails to respect the will of the people: cash remains popular.