Dumitru Miron

European Union Trade Policy

The process of economic integration at the European level began with the integration of the market of goods. Therefore, the EU’s trade policy was the first genuine common policy. Even if it is still the most important global trading actor, the EU cannot ignore the transformations taking place within the multilateral trading system. The current context is marked by tensions between multilateralism and regionalism. This raises numerous challenges to the resilience of the global trading system. The present investigation is based on the hypothesis that the trade policy is still a major tool used to address these challenges. This chapter provides an examination of EU’s trade policy emphasizing the actors involved, the challenges that the EU has to face, the tools that can be used and the specific responsibilities of the European integrationist group.

The Single European Market: Challenges for Doing Business

It is not easy to establish the precise moment when the concept of economic integration emerged in the sense that it was given after the start of the European integration process. Pelkmans define economic integration as a process of “elimination of economic frontiers between two or more economies” considering that “the fundamental significance of economic integration is the increase of actual or potential competition”. This chapter contains a few answers to some important questions such as: what is the substance of integration and what are the criteria underlying the decision of states to launch an integration process? What are the symptoms based on which one can decide whether the integration process functions properly or if it still is a desideratum? This chapter analyses the single internal market as an essential stage of the European integration process stressing the four freedoms of goods, services, capitals and human resources.