Business Environments in the Single European Market Essay

Business Environments in the Single European Market - Essay Example The common market refers to a phase in the process of international integration, which according to a ruling of the Court of Justice, aims at doing away with all the barriers to trade between communities with a view of bring together national markets into one large market, forming conditions that are as close as possible to a legitimate internal market. It is important to tone that the Lisbon Treaty does not take into consideration the ‘single market’ concepts and those of the ‘common market.’ The words ‘common market’ were replaced the outcome of this stage of the process of integration, by the treaty, which on the operations of the European Union, according to the Treaty’s Article 26 is composed of an area that do not have internal frontiers whereby the free movement of individuals, capital, services and goods is ensured according to the Treaties’ stipulations (Barnard, 2012, p.99). There are several challenges that the community had to deal with during the stage of common market so as to attain the objective of single market. First, the formation of the common market needed the eradication of all export and import duties that existed between the member states of the community before the European Economic Community was formed. The member states successfully eliminated the custom obstacles even before the deadline set by the Treaty had expired and how they begun to put up some other barriers between them, immediately after they dismantled the tariffs, especially the technical barriers that were even more hard to deal with in some instances (Blanpain, 2012, p.65). The formation of a common market that looked like an internal market does not only mean that there was the trade liberalization among the member states that were taking part but also called for free movement of individuals, factors of production such as services, capital and labor. Furthermore, it involves a free formation of corporations and indivi duals in all the boundary of the member states so as to be in a position of exercising their business or professional activities (Rogovsky and Salais, 2012, p.73). Therefore, in order to talk about a common market, there has to be the availability of four major freedoms between the participating member states, including freedom of movement of services and goods, due to the eradication of the barriers of trade; freedom of movement of workers who are salaried and those that are not, as a result of the eradication of all the barriers to their entrance together with residence in the other member states; the freedom of formation of corporations and persons within the boundaries of the member states as well as of the offering of services by them within the countries that host them; and the freedom of movement of capital for the purposes of business and individual. Freedom seems like the key or main word of the common market (Lejour & Mooij & Nahuis, 2001, p.65). This paper will also raise awareness about the enlargement of