CEPS: Thirty Years of the Single European Market

25 October 2016

This paper reviews the main developments in Single European Market (SEM) legislation and regulatory activities over the past three decades; it summarises the results of the SEM programme in market integration; and discusses the impact of economic integration within the SEM.

Over the past thirty years, the Single European Market has been the core business of the European Union, and enormous progress has been achieved in both ‘widening’ the economic activities covered by EU legislation and ‘deepening’ the acquis to overcome emerging gaps in integration in areas already covered by legislation. And yet, empirical evidence indicates that market integration has stalled on many fronts and, more importantly, that the expected economic benefits of integration in terms of higher growth of incomes, jobs, and productivity have fallen short of expectations, notably in the long-established EU-15 member states. The situation has not improved since the introduction of the euro.

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