Single Market
Single Market in Europe
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Description of Single market
The Concise Publication of the European Union describes single market in the following terms: [1] From the outset, a single, or common, internal European market was the primary stated purpose of the 1957 Treaty of Rome (see more in this European publication). The promise of its creation had been a virtual condition of Marshall Aid after World War II, and the sixsignatories of the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community Treaty turned their attention to forming a wider customs union as soon as their dream of a European army ended with the collapse of the European Defence Communityin 1954. The arrangements envisaged in the Treaty of Rome were no mere free trade area. They entailed a common external tariff; the abolition of internal customs duties; the removal of distortions to competition; the harmonisation of relevant laws; the adoption of a common agricultural policy; freedom of movement for persons, goods, services and capital; and the creation of various supranational bodies to execute the Treaty's ambitious purpose.
By 1968 the customs union was complete, but during the next 15 years progress on the single market was blocked by all manner of non-tariff barriers. Up to 70 forms were needed by truck drivers crossing EC borders; public contracts were reserved for national companies; product standards and professional qualifications were neither harmonised nor given mutual recognition; service industries were largely confined to their own member state; capital movements were not liberalised; and differential rates of VAT and duty were distorting trade (see more in this European publication). By an irony of history, it was largely on British initiative that the EC was able to recapture its momentum. Margaret Thatcher supplied much of the political drive, Commissioner Cockfield produced a crucial White Paper, and an Anglo-French report to the European Parliament also had a significant impact. Meanwhile, Jacques Delors was about to take up his first Commission presidency in 1985. The enlargement of the Community had made unanimity increasingly difficult to reach, and in the new mood it was agreed that Lord Cockfield's proposals to remedy the defects of the single market could only be implemented by qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers. This was duly enacted in the 1986 Single European Act.
Delors and Cockfield threw themselves into the revived single marketprogramme to great effect, producing 282 Directives and Regulations, of which over 90% had been passed by the Council of Ministers and nearly 80% were being implemented in member states by the target date of 31 December 1992. Delors perceived market integration in the context of economic and political integration, characteristically pushing any measure which conduced to his larger vision; as a consequence, the single market concept soon expanded to embrace such ideas as the removal of passport controls, the introduction of a single currency, police co-operation, 'social action' and tax harmonisation, ideas which were to take more concrete shape in the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam. Others, including Thatcher, regarded the single market as a finite end in itself, irritated at the excessively detailed regulation which accompanied it and resistant to the open-ended amplifications which were being attached to it and which raised fundamental issues of national sovereignty.
The specific single market measures (most of which also apply in the European Economic Area) are too numerous to itemise (see more in this European publication). Many of them go into detail beyond what is needed for the setting of acceptable standards, engendering a sense that the EU is out of touch, especially among consumers and small businesses. Other measures give rise to concern for the opposite reason, that of being too sweeping (see more in this European publication). The 1997 Amsterdam summit used the single market as a pretext to assert the EU's right to intervene in national tax and social policy, and the premature launch of the euro in 1999 was largely predicated on the theory that a unified market automatically required a unified currency.
It is hard to reach a convincing verdict on the single market. It is certainly arguable that a vigorous programme of mutual recognition of products and standards might have been at least as successful in promoting economic activity as the harmonisation policies that the Commission has pursued. Equally, it is true that the single market remains an uncompleted process - financial services and public procurement are still far from liberalised, compliance levels vary considerably between member states and anti-competitive practices abound. In these areas, the Commission is an advocate of free market philosophy and fair treatment. To Anglo-Saxon eyes, however, there seems to be a bias towards the 'Rhine model' of society, together with a worrying tendency to exploit the qualified majority voting that accompanies single market legislation to undermine the powers of individual countries. Thus the single market, like so much else in the EU, reflects the unfinished debate about the rival merits of an integrated federal Europe or a Europe of independent, if closely linked, member states.
Resources
Notas y References
Based on the book "A Concise Publication of the European Union from Aachen to Zollverein", by Rodney Leach (Profile Books; London)
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