Is the EU getting its Single Market Act together?

Yesterday, we noted how strongly the president of the European Council [ @euHvR on Twitter ] underlined the importance of the internal market: Herman Van Rompuy: ”The Internal Market is the EU's biggest asset”.

Today, we take a short tour of relevant materials. Some of it may shed additional light on why the internal market is important for businesses and citizens.


Single Market Act

Some may want to get to know all EU legislation on the internal market (part of the union acquis), while others may be more interested in detailed information about the proposed internal market reforms. The reform minded can navigate to the Commission web pages about the Single Market Act.

The document of reference is the communication from the European Commission. On Eur-Lex you find the language version you want among the 22 on offer for the Commission proposal.

For the English version I chose the direct link to the corrected text, available through the Single Market Act web page, although in the end it was about just a single word:

Towards a Single Market Act - For a highly competitive social market economy - 50 proposals for improving our work, business and exchanges with one another; Brussels, 11.11.2010 COM(2010) 608 final/2 (about 45 pages)


Competitiveness Council

The 3057th Competititiveness (Internal Market, Industry, Research and Space) Council meeting, Brussels 10 December 2010, produced initial reactions from the member state governments in the form of:

Conclusions on the Single Market Act



Internal market blog posts

Here are links to a number of my earlier, but not all too distant blog posts concerning the internal market.

EU Commission: Internal market reform (9 December 2010)

EU Single Market Act: Disappointing start? (10 December 2010)

(In Finnish) Saako kelkasta pudonnut Eurooppa sisämarkkinat heräämään? (12 December 2010)

(In Finnish) EU:n sisämarkkinoiden toimenpidepaketti (Single Market Act) (12 December 2010)

(In Finnish) EU:n 'Single Market Act' on käännösongelma (13 December 2010)

EU Single Market Act varia (13 December 2010)

EU Competitiveness Council on Single Market Act (14 December 2010)

(In Finnish) Onko EU:ssa yhtenäismarkkinat vai sisämarkkinat? (15 December 2010)


EEA: 506 million consumers

Just as a reminder: Even if we speak about the EU's internal market (or single market), these issues are relevant to the whole European Economic Area. The EEA comprises the 27 EU member states as well as three of the EFTA states, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. This adds up to a home market (of sorts) of about 506 million consumers in all.

No mean feet, said the centipede.



Ralf Grahn



P.S. Fleishman-Hillard's second European Parliament Digital Trends Survey describes how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) use the web. You can follow #epdigitrends on Twitter.

P.S. 2: You can follow me on Facebook and on Twitter @RalfGrahn, in addition to my blogs: Grahnlaw (in English), Grahnblawg (in Swedish) and Eurooppaoikeus (in Finnish), as well as the trilingual Grahnlaw Suomi Finland.