E. Defining the Single Market Flashcards
What is a Customs Union?
- Common external tariff
- No tariffs among member states
What is the Single Market?
- Customs Union
- Free movement of goods, services, people and capital
- Common economic regulation and trade policy
- Common competition policy
Which EU documents are key to our understanding of the Single Market?
Treaty of Rome 1958: European Economic Community (EEC) called for a ‘common market’ and created the exclusive competence for trade
The Single European Act 1987: Aimed for the completion of the single market by 1992
How Has the EU encouraged the free movement of goods?
- Removing customs duties and import quotas through Articles 34 and 35 in the Treaty on the Function of the Union
- Through a relaxed approximating response which lays down the requirements of national standards utilising the ECJ
- Developing infrastructure that allows for the cheap and rapid movement of goods
- Having competition policies that navigate around natural monopolies while preserving the competitiveness of EU firms
Which goods were of particular difficulty in getting common across the EU
alcohol, bananas, spreads
How has the EU promoted the free movement of services
- there are still some barriers to establishment of services in other member states but the EU is working on liberalizing these services where possible
- Building the infrastructure needed by services if needed; think wifi and digital services
What are the difficulties in the establishment of the movement of services?
- Whose law is the service provider responsible to? the host or the origin?
- Tight regulation of financial services following the GFC
- How to liberalise digital services without jeopardizing cyber security?
How has the EU promoted the free movement of people?
- Right to residence for up to 3 months after that need to show employment which should not impeded by nationality
- Increased recognition of qualifications,
- Increased legal entitlements to state-provided goods; education, healthcare, welfare
- EU Freedom of movement and residence – allows people to move themselves and their family around the EU with only a single EU
How has the EU promoted the free movement of capital?
- Open capital markets
- Capital markets even further open through the monetary union of the Eurozone
What are some difficulties to the free movement of capital?
- Taxation rates not standardized across states; investors have different incentives elsewhere
- Differing financial stability throughout the Union - compare Greece and Germany
- How to manage banks in the wake of the GFC and Eurozone? – Providing rules supervision and resolution
- Dealing with financial services without London in a post-Brexit world
Why is the freedom of movement so important?
- Economically competitive
- Economically efficiency
- Ensures a level playing field
What are the arguments in favour of the single market?
- Economic efficiency through competition - lower prices
- Greater consumer choice for products
- Job creation
- Creating a stable economic and financial environment
- Spillover; the single market is the genesis of the EU but has ‘spilled-over’ into non-economic areas to deal with the management of the single market; environmental, security, social, cultural
- Promotes a common European identity
- Hoped to make the EU more competitive as it was slipping behind in the 1970’s against say Japan
What are the arguments against the single market?
- Interdependence risks the economic health of the entire Union - Eurozone crisis
- Neoliberal thinking leaving the EU increasingly vulnerable to corporate and financial interests
- Inequality that is just accepted in neoliberal economics
- the border problems created by the single market; Northern Ireland, Gibraltar
- Neo-imperialism; about creating a economy that can facilitate the selling of developed countries
What are the arguments against the single market?
- Interdependence risks the economic health of the entire Union - Eurozone crisis
- Neoliberal thinking leaving the EU increasingly vulnerable to corporate and financial interests
- Inequality that is just accepted in neoliberal economics
- the border problems created by the single market; Northern Ireland, Gibraltar
- Neo-imperialism Marxist critique would say developed Western countries are trying to create a market that can facilitate the selling of their developed goods in developing countries
