The Single Market
1. Increased prosperity: over the last 15 years the Single Market has
increased the EU's prosperity by 2.15% of GDP. In 2006 alone this meant an
overall increase of EUR 240 billion - or EUR 518 for every EU citizen -
compared to a situation without the Single Market.
2. More jobs: 2.75 million extra jobs have been created over the
period 1992-2006 as a result of the Single Market.
3. Easier to travel and shop: EU citizens can travel across most of
the EU without carrying a passport and without being stopped for checks at
borders. Shoppers have full consumer rights when shopping outside their country
and there are no limits on what they can buy and take with them for personal
use.
4. More opportunities to live, work and study abroad: more than 15
million EU citizens have moved to other EU countries to work or to enjoy their
retirement, benefiting from the transferability of social benefit, while 1.5
million young people have completed part of their studies in another Member
State with the help of the Erasmus programme.
5. Wider choice of products and services: 73% of EU citizens think the
Single Market has contributed positively to the range of products on offer,
while the establishment of common standards has led to safer and environmentally
friendlier products, such as food, cars and medicines.
6. Lower prices: the opening up of national markets and the resultant
increase in competition has driven down prices of, for example, internet access,
air travel and telephone calls (the latter having been reduced on average by 40%
over the period 2000-2006).
7. Less red tape: rather than adding to red tape, Single Market rules
often replace a large number of complex and different national laws with a
single framework, reducing bureaucracy for citizens, and compliance costs for
businesses, who pass those savings on to consumers. It has also become easier to
start or buy a business: the average cost for setting up a new company in the
former EU-15 has fallen from EUR 813 in 2002 to EUR 554 in 2007, and the
time needed to register a company administratively was reduced from 24 days in
2002 to about 12 days today. But more progress is needed.
8. Huge potential market: any business in the EU automatically has
close to 500 million potential customers on its doorstep. This allows larger
businesses to benefit from enormous economies of scale, while new markets have
been opened up to small- and medium-sized businesses which previously would have
been dissuaded from exporting by the cost and hassle.
9. Much easier to do business: trade within the EU has risen by 30%
since 1992. The absence of border bureaucracy has cut delivery times and reduced
costs. Before the frontiers came down, the tax system alone required 60 million
customs clearance documents annually: these are no longer needed.
10. Better value for taxpayers: as a result of more open and
competitive public procurement rules, governments have more money to spend on
priorities such as health and education. For example, the price of railway
rolling stock has dropped, with studies pointing at savings from 10% to
30%.
