Customs union In addition to eliminating internal tariffs, member countries levy a common external tariff on goods being imported from nonmembers in order to establish a customs union. For example, when the EU was organized in 1957, it began to remove internal tariffs among member states, but in 1967 it eliminated the remaining internal tariffs and established a common external tariff, meaning that goods shipped into one member country from abroad are free from tariffs in the rest of the member countries. Now the EU negotiates as one region in the WTO and other regional and bilateral agreements rather than as separate countries. (Thus, as we observed in our opening case, when it came to import quotas on cars shipped to EU members, Japan had to negotiate with the EU as a whole, rather than with individual countries.) Customs unions account for less than 10 percent of the number of RTAs identified by the wTO, the EU is a significant trade group. Most trade gains come from membership in an FTA, not a customs union, which is driven more by political than economic reasons