Keep the flickering single market beacons alight

Date: 12/12/1996

W HEN a chain of more than 1,000 beacons was lit across the countries of the European Union nearly four years ago to usher in the internal market, there was much rejoicing.

The beacons were intended as a powerful symbol of the end of a six-year bonfire of red tape and paperwork, as restrictions on the free movement of goods and services between member states were lifted - up to a point.

While much has been achieved in the four years since the barriers came down (in theory at least) at the stroke of midnight on 31 December 1992, much remains to be done - as Commission President Jacques Santer's call this week for a new deadline of 1 January 1999 to be set for completing the internal market and a special report by European Voice to mark the approaching anniversary demonstrate.

Internal Market Commissioner Mario Monti, who has long been a critic of those EU governments who pay lip-service to the notion of a genuinely border-free Europe and yet in practice fail to take the necessary steps to achieve it, said recently that there were signs that several member states were preparing to raise this issue at the Intergovernmental Conference on Union reform.

We can only hope his optimism is not misplaced. While significant gaps in the internal market were tolerated in the early days, as an inevitable consequence of the enormous amount of work involved in getting such a mammoth project off the ground, patience is now wearing thin.

While ordinary members of the public may have expected dramatic changes overnight on the date the internal market officially came into force, European businesses recognised that '1992' - as it was universally known - was in fact merely a staging post on the way to a truly border-free Europe. But few then would have expected it to take so long to complete the journey.

The European Commission, while criticising member states for dragging their feet in some key sectors, also boasts about the internal market's successes in creating an estimated 300,000 to 900,000 jobs and boosting revenues by 1.5&percent;. Its desire to emphasise the positive rather than dwell on the negative is understandable. After all, the internal market is the one aspect of the EU's development which unites all governments behind membership of the club.

But if the Commission really wants to persuade governments to take the action needed to complete the project they launched with such fanfare in 1987, it must continue to hammer home just how much more could be achieved if the remaining cracks in the single market edifice were repaired. In 1988, the Cecchini report predicted that the free movement of goods and services would boost the Union's gross domestic product by 4&percent; and result in the creation of 2 million jobs.

Viewed in that light, its achievements so far are modest indeed.