The single market remains the decisive power of the EU. CEPS Policy Priorities for 2019-2024, 18 October 2019

The EU’s single market should not just be one among several priorities for the new Commission and Parliament. The single market was and is the core business of the EU. Much of what goes on or is proposed under elaborate titles is actually part and parcel of the single market. The striking revelation of Brexit for many EU citizens and all businesses is precisely the centrality of the single market (including the customs union) to EU membership. Its value is first of all economic, of course, as it yields higher prosperity. However, it is critical in other arenas where ‘EU clout’ derived from the single market matters, such as multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations, global climate deals, standard setting, rule-making for international financial stability and even foreign policy

Customs union under increasing costs conditions

customs union;international economics

Lucas Pelkmans: Taking it from the top

Pelkmans takes a systems biology approach to endocytosis and viral entry

Pre-empting technical barriers in the Single Market. CEPS Policy Brief No. 277, 11 July 2012

Effective enforcement and compliance with EU law is not just a legal necessity, it is also of economic interest since the potential of the Single Market will be fully exploited. Enforcement barriers generate unjustified costs and hindrances or uncertainty for cross-border business and might deprive consumers from receiving the full benefit of greater choice and/or cheaper offers. The EU has developed several types of enforcement efforts (preventive initiatives, pre-infringement initiatives and formal infringement procedures). More recently, the emphasis has been placed on effective prevention. This CEPS Policy Brief analyses the functioning of one preventive mechanism (the 98/34 Directive) and assesses its potential to detect and prevent technical or other barriers in the course of the last 25 years. Based on an empirical approach, it shows that this amazing mechanism has successfully prevented thousands of new technical barriers from arising in the internal goods market

Assessing subsidiarity

This paper discusses the assessment of subsidiarity in the European Union from a broad fiscal federalism perspective. It incorporates recent insights from political economy analyses of fiscal federalism to arrive at a list of issues that need to be taken into account when considering whether concrete policies should be centralised in the European Union or not. �

Economic Implications of Enlargement. Bruges European Economic Policy (BEEP) Briefing 1/2002

The Eastern enlargement is about to be decided by the European Council. As expected, the “end game “ of the negotiations and assessments is heavily biased by a narrow perspective on net transfers, on income compensations to Central European farmers and on the psychological politics of a single “big bang “. None of these three so-called key items of the end game are of much relevance to appreciate the significance of enlargement. Net transfers have little to do with the costs and benefits of club membership for countries which pay, and can lead to addiction and lethargy rather than extra growth if market integration, macro-economic stability and domestic reforms are not taken serious (as the case of Greece before 1997 has demonstrated). Income compensations for Eastern farmers are crucial for this pressure group, and symbolically of some importance in domestic politics because of the perversity that rich farmers get more, but their absence is likely to serve the public interest in candidate countries far better. And being part of the big bang, as against getting in one or three years later, has assumed a dramatic meaning during this end game, far beyond its true proportions. This hectic European theatre tends to obscure what enlargement is mainly about, now that the stability and values have been secured for the peoples from Central Europe. In a guaranteed setting of peace, freedom and security, enlargement is about greater prosperity

Mutual Recognition: economic and regulatory logic in goods and services. Bruges European Economic Research (BEER) Papers 24/June 2012

Mutual recognition is one of the most appreciated innovations of the EU. The idea is that one can pursue market integration, indeed "deep' market integration, while respecting 'diversity' amongst the participating countries. Put differently, in pursuing 'free movement' for goods, mutual recognition facilitates free movement by disciplining the nature and scope of 'regulatory barriers', whilst allowing some degree of regulatory discretion for EU Member States. This BEER paper attempts to explain the rationale and logic of mutual recognition in the EU internal goods market, its working in actual practice for about three decades now, culminating in a qualitative cost/benefit analysis and its recent improvement in terms of 'governance' in the so-called New Legislative Framework (first denoted as the 2008 Goods package) thereby ameliorating the benefits/costs ratio. For new (in contrast to existing) national regulation, the intrusive EU procedure to impose mutual recognition is presented as well, with basic data so as to show its critical importance to keep the internal goods market free. All this is complemented by a short summary of the scant economic literature on mutual recognition. Subsequently, the analysis is extended to the internal market for services. This is done in two steps, first by reminding the debate on the origin principle (which goes further than mutual recognition EU-style) and how mutual recognition works under the horizontal services directive. This is followed by a short section on how mutual recognition works in vertical (i.e. sectoral) services markets

How Social is European Integration? Bruges European Economic Policy (BEEP) Briefing 18/2007

The social dimension of the internal market or of the EU more generally has recently been under quite fundamental attack. Calls for 'Europe' to be 'more social' have been heard repeatedly. Witness the polarized debates about the services directive, the anxieties concerning several ECJ cases about what limitations of the free movement of workers (posted or not) are justified or the assertion of a 'neo-liberal agenda' in Brussels disregarding or eroding the social dimension. This BEEP Briefing paper takes an analytical approach to these issues and to the possible 'framing' involved. Such an analysis reveals a very different picture than the negative framing in such debates has it: there is nothing particular 'a-social' about the internal market or the EU at large. This overall conclusion is reached following five steps. First, several 'preliminaries' of the social dimension have to be kept in mind (including the two-tier regulatory & expenditure structure of what is too loosely called 'social Europe' ) and this is only too rarely done or at best in partial, hence misleading, ways. Second, the social acquis at EU and Member States' levels is spelled out, broken down into four aspects (social spending; labour market regulation; industrial relations; free movements & establishment). Assessing the EU acquis in the light of the two levels of powers shows clearly that it is the combination of the two levels which matters. Member States and e.g. labour unions do not want the EU level to become deeply involved ( with some exceptions) and the actual impact of free movement and establishment is throttled by far-reaching host-country control and the requirement of a 'high level of social protection' in the treaty. Third, six anxieties about the social dimension of the internal market are discussed and few arguments are found which are attributable to the EU or its weakening social dimension. Fourth, another six anxieties are discussed emerging from the socio-economic context of the social dimension of the EU at large. The analysis demonstrates that, even if these anxieties ought to be taken serious, the EU is hardly or not the culprit. Fifth, all this is complemented by a number of other facts or arguments strengthening the case that the EU social dimension is fine

Just a little Brexit?: ‘Alternative (customs) arrangements’ and the Withdrawal Agreement. CEPS Policy Insights No 2019-13/ September 2019

With the five-week closure of the UK Parliament, the highly entertaining sessions of the House of Commons have been adjourned. Could this artificial breathing space provide a realistic opportunity to deliver the now infamous ‘alternative customs arrangements’, making the backstop unnecessary? And without the backstop, could the Withdrawal Agreement be ratified soon, opening at long last the way to genuine negotiations about the treaty on the future relations between the UK and the EU-27 (based on the Political Declaration, a kind of MoU on these negotiations)

Rules of origin and the web of East Asian free trade agreements

The authors provide an overview of the preferential rules of origin in East Asia, highlighting the aspects that might possibly generate some trade-chilling effects. They review characteristics of existing preferential trade agreements with special emphasis on lessons from the European experience, and analyze some important features of the existing rules of origin in East and South-East Asian regional integration agreements. The empirical analysis of the effectiveness of preferentialism on intra-regional trade flows focuses on the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), with the aim of providing a rough estimate of the costs of requesting preferences. The results suggest that preferential tariffs favorably affect intra-regional imports only at very high margins (around 25 percentage points). This points to the likelihood of high administrative costs attached to the exploitation of preferences, particularly with regard to the compliance with AFTA's rules of origin.Free Trade,Trade Law,Rules of Origin,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research