The Increasingly Differentiated European Single Market?

This contribution explores the range of differentiation in the EU Single Market and, specifically, differentiation created through the varying transposition and implementation of EU Single Market law and policies and legally entrenched differentiation. Differentiation has in effect contributed to discrimination in the Single Market and has undermined market integration. Enlargement de facto increased soft and instrumental forms of differentiation. However, there is no correlation between the full transposition and implementation of EU legislation and policy and whether the member state is one of the older EU-15 or one of the newer EU-13. Moreover, it is clear from several legislative developments in the 2000s — including the directives on takeovers and energy production and supply, and the use of Enhanced Cooperation provisions on the Financial Transactions Tax (although not implemented) and the Unitary Patent — that the different preferences of the older member states — and notably German and French government preferences rooted in microeconomic interests — have driven legislated and, potentially permanent differentiation.