ABSTRACT
The initial Single European Market (SEM) programme, covering the years 1985-92, was limited, if not minimalist, in the efforts it made towards the realisation of its stated objective. Much of the programme was about catching up with lapsed priorities that were espoused within the founding Treaties of the European Communities. Indeed the Commission always marketed its single market initiative as merely the first phase of moves towards the establishment of an SEM. A true SEM will only exist when all goods and services that can be traded are freely tradable -and when potentially mobile factors of production have no barriers inhibiting their right to do so. This means that the moves towards an SEM extend beyond the priorities outlined within the initial programme and will need to be adjusted as internationalisation creeps into more and more product, service and factor markets.
