ABSTRACT
The future of the Internal Market in insurance is closely linked to at least two issues, one narrow and one broad. The narrow issue is how the financial services sector as a whole will develop within the Europe of the future, a form of words which itself conceals many very difficult issues about the future shape of the European Union. The broader issue concerns the development of the Internal Market as a whole within the same imprecisely defined ‘future Europe’. In considering the issues specifically relevant to the development of the Single Market in insurance it is necessary to take account of changes in the structure of the market which have happened since the Single Market Programme began in 1985. The Commission’s Internal Market Programme started out on the basis of the assumptions that financial services, taken as a sector of the market, would continue to operate in much the same way as it had operated for many years past.
