Examples of Single Market barriers for businesses
On 10 March 2020 the European Commission published its report "Identifying and addressing barriers to the Single Market", as part of the spring Single Market package. BusinessEurope responded by its position paper of 10 June 2020, broadly supporting the analysis, however noting that the spring package is only a part of the answer and there is a need for additional concrete actions to remove barriers that harm the EU businesses and consumers.
To facilitate informed decision-making, tangible examples of the barriers businesses and citizens face in the Single Market are key to understand the remaining bottlenecks. BusinessEurope continues building up the evidence and has prepared a series of short papers showcasing practical issues on the ground, which can be downloaded as a package or individually, as they illustrate barriers across a wide range of different policy areas: from free movement of goods and services to company law, social policy coordination or transport.
The papers supplement the work done by the European Commission in analysing the "root causes" of barriers and are structured around two categories:
- barriers emerging under the existing EU legislation, due to its complexity, inconsistencies, uneven interpretation and application by Member States, etc.
- barriers emerging in the absence of EU legislation, where an additional harmonised framework might be necessary.
The examples linked to this introductory note are not an exhaustive list and would be supplemented by new cases in the future.