The Single Market

The Four Freedoms

The Single Market, completed in 1993, is built on four fundamental freedoms:

1. Free movement of goods: No tariffs or quotas between member states. A product legal in one country can be sold in all others.
2. Free movement of services: Companies can provide services across borders. A bank licensed in France can operate in Germany.
3. Free movement of capital: Money flows freely. Citizens can invest, buy property, or open bank accounts in any member state.
4. Free movement of people: EU citizens can live, work, and study in any member state without a visa.

The Single Market covers approximately 450 million consumers and generates about 14% of global GDP. It is the largest single market in the world by GDP.

The Four Freedoms in Practice

Each freedom is abstract until you see what it lets an ordinary person or business actually do — and what would happen without it.

These freedoms are legally enforceable: if a member state erects a barrier — say, a rule that effectively keeps out another country's goods — the Commission or a national court (via the Court of Justice) can strike it down. The Single Market is therefore not just an economic zone but a body of law.

Case Study: Cassis de Dijon and Mutual Recognition

How do you build a single market among countries with wildly different product rules? The answer came from the Court of Justice in a 1979 case, Cassis de Dijon.

Germany banned the French blackcurrant liqueur Cassis de Dijon from sale because its alcohol content (around 15–20%) fell below the German legal minimum for fruit liqueurs. The importer challenged the ban. The Court ruled that a product lawfully produced and sold in one member state must, in principle, be allowed onto the market of any other — the principle of mutual recognition.

The consequences were enormous. Instead of negotiating identical rules for every product across the whole EU (an impossible task), states simply had to accept each other's standards unless they could prove a genuine public-interest justification such as health or safety. Mutual recognition became a cornerstone of the Single Market: it is why a toy, a food, or a cosmetic approved in one member state can usually be sold in all 27. This is a textbook example of the Court of Justice building the internal market through case law, not just legislation.