It is perhaps the most striking failure of the EU that nearly 30 years since Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act with the vision of a single trading market by 1992, that in 2014 we do not yet have a genuine single market in the services sector. This profound failure has cost the EU billions in economic growth and disproportionately affects the UK, which has a huge service industry base.
The EU official website, with a delicious piece of understatement, comments:
‘Despite its achievements so far, the single market is not yet complete. Important gaps remain in some areas. Pieces of legislation are missing. And administrative obstacles and lacking enforcement leave the full potential of the Single Market unexploited.’
The cost of this failure is stark.
Services account for 71 per cent of EU GDP, but only 3.2 per cent of this is from intra-EU trade.
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