ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the effect of a continuously changing Europe on companies and their workers. It analyses the impact of integration on the business environment at each of the stages. All the advantages of the European Community Treaty, from which the Cleanair Company benefited so greatly, did not come overnight. The Single European Act of 1987 was the first treaty that significantly changed the level of integration. The chapter also describes the measure which had by far the greatest impact on European business life in the last millennium. This was the first and most fundamental step in moving from a mindset of coexistence to one of co-operation in the European economic arena. On 1st January 1998 the European Commission opened up the telecommunications sector completely to competition. A distinction needs to be made between the impact of enlargement on the European Union as a whole, on the old Member States and on the new Member States.
