The Commission of the European Communities held its 1000th meeting on 21 February 1990 under the presidency of Jacques Delors, President of the CEC. Members of the CEC who took part in the meeting included Martin Bangemann, Vice-President of the CEC in charge of Internal Market and Industrial Affairs and the Relations with Parliament, Manuel Marín, Vice-President of the CEC in charge of Cooperation and Development and Fisheries, Sir Leon Brittan, Vice-President of the CEC in charge of Competition and Financial Institutions, Karel Van Miert, Member of the CEC in charge of Transport, Credit and Investments, Protection and Promotion of Consumer Interests, Abel Matutes, Member of the CEC in charge of Mediterranean Policy, Relations with Latin America and Asia (excluding Far East) and North-South Relations, Henning Christophersen, Vice-President of the CEC in charge of Economic and Financial Affairs, Coordination of Structural Funds and the Statistical Office, Filippo Maria Pandolfi, Vice-President of the CEC in charge of Science, Research and Development, Telecommunications, Information Technology and Innovation and the Joint Research Centre, Vasso Papandréou, Member of the CEC in charge of Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs, Human Resources, Education and Training, Peter Schmidhuber, Member of the CEC in charge of Budget and Financial Control, Jean Dondelinger, Member of the CEC in charge of Audiovisual and Cultural Affairs, Information and Communication, a People's Europe and the Office for Official Publications, Carlo Ripa di Meana, Member of the CEC in charge of Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection, Ray Mac Sharry, Member of the CEC in charge of Agriculture and Rural Development, David Williamson, Secretary-General of the CEC, and Pascal Lamy, Head of Cabinet of Jacques Delors.The Commission marked the occasion by receiving the Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon, in the presence of Manuel Santarelli, Director-General of the Information, Communication and Culture DG of the CEC, and Nicole Cauchie, Head of Unit at the Information, Communication and Culture DG of the CEC. Jean-Michel Folon presented an original watercolour on Europe to be used later to help project the Community image in information campaigns between now and 1992.The first meeting of the Comission of the European Communities took place on Thursday 6 July 1967. The Commission is the decision-making executive arm of the Communities and has existed in its present form since 1 July 1967, the date on which the Treaty merging the institutions of the three Communities, the ECSC (founded in 1951), and the EEC and Euratom (both founded in 1967), signed in Brussels on 8 April 1965 entered into force after ratification by the six founder Member States. Up until then, each of the Communities had its own Council and its own executive (the High Authority in the case of the ECSC and two separate Commissions in the case of the EEC and Euratom), and each institution had a separate administration.The Merger Treaty of 1965 established a single Council and a single Commission but left the scope of the three Community Treaties unchanged. Since then the Commission has exercised different powers according to the legal framework it is operationg in, since the three Communities, albeit now under the same umbrella, retain their distinctive personality.The first meeting of the Commission, chaired by its President, Jean Rey, was mainly concerned with the difficult task of reorganizing what was still a young institution.