ABSTRACT
The European Community envisages the completion of its Single Market by the end of 1992. Before the current liberalization programme started in the mid-eighties, the unsatisfactory state of the internal market had been lamented and the benefits of internal liberalization had been propagated. In 1985, the EC Commission published the White Paper arguing that the completion of the Single European Market is necessary for EC industries to remain competitive. “Disunity” in the EC would lead to a decline vis-a-vis the U.S. and Japan. The assessment of existing barriers to trade found significant scope for internal liberalization and identified three major barriers: physical barriers, such as administrative costs related to border crossings, technical barriers, e.g. quantitative restrictions and regulations, and fiscal barriers consisting of export subsidies, tax exemptions etc.
