Abstract

At 14 trillion euros GDP, the European Union’s (EU) internal market comprises the world’s largest economy (European Commission, 2015c). What began in 1957 as the European Economic Community’s “common market” has evolved in terms of depth, geographic spaces, and even its name. What started as a common market of six Western European countries, by the mid-1980s it had become the “single market” with 12 members encompassing most of Western Europe. (The EU’s current EU treaties use the more formal term, “internal market” to denote the EU’s integrated market.)