Integration of the European Single Market Thirty Years After Its Creation

Abstract

The European single market was launched on 1 st January 1993. Presumably, it is at that time that three fundamental barriers (physical control at the border, various technical requirements, and differing systems of indirect taxation) were formally removed to ensure four treaty-based freedoms: free movement of goods, freedom to provide services, free movement of people and free movement of capital. The EU single market is characteristic in nature due to the scope of legislation governing businesses and consumers, which is largely subject not to unification, rather only harmonisation. Regrettably, this has resulted in EU legislation being (deliberately at times) not always correctly implemented into the national legal system. This leads to market fragmentation and creates barriers, rather than eliminating them. This study aims to identify the relationship between full and correct implementation of EU legislation into the Member States' legal systems versus progress in European single market integration. Therefore, the evolution of indicators defining how much EU single market legislation in the Member States has been implemented was examined. At the same time, changes in transposition deficit (from 1997 to 2021) and conformity deficit (from 2004 to 2021) for particular Member States were critically analysed. Further, it was analysed how much the single market was integrated from the perspective of goods being the main components of the single European market. To this end, intra-EU trade was analysed as broken down into exports and imports of goods, versus the global trade of individual Member States (including trade with non-EU partners). The outcome of the study shows that both transposition and conformity deficit levels are quite high. In turn, intra-EU trade in goods does not largely correspond to the extent of implementation of EU legislation, which may be caused by growing interest in non-EU partners without compromising EU presence.