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The European Union's effort to create a single market involves the removal of trade barriers created by divergent national standards and regulations, which need to be reconciled to promote market access and inter‐state commerce. This book provides a comprehensive account of the regulatory strategies and institutional arrangements adopted by the European Union in promoting the single market. It provides a historical overview and detailed case studies of the various regulatory initiatives that have altered the boundaries between the public and private sector in fostering market integration. Efforts to remove non‐tariff barriers to trade have relied heavily on European case law, and this book argues that the European Court of Justice has actively shaped markets by balancing the goals of market liberalization and market governance, while also fostering legal compliance with stated regulatory objectives. Although markets are absolutely dependent on public authority, the book demonstrates how the EU has innovatively used non‐state actors to set standards for market access. By delegating regulatory responsibility to private standards‐setting bodies, a hybrid model of regulation has emerged that draws on private sector resources to achieve regulatory goals, primarily by establishing minimum thresholds for regulatory standards and related testing and certification practices. Expected to be more effective than the time‐consuming and ultimately limited harmonization of national practices, completion of the single market through principles of ‘mutual recognition’ and standard setting has been difficult to achieve. The effectiveness of this regulatory process in promoting market integration, and its impact on European business, are examined in detail. Throughout the book, comparisons are made with American efforts to remove internal trade barriers to demonstrate the difficulties of constructing a single market, and to highlight that both cases have involved public and private efforts to coordinate standards. Many of the strategies undertaken by the EU echo earlier American market‐building efforts.

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Among the most important technical barriers to trade are the different standards, testing and certification measures for products and services. Efforts to co‐ordinate these within Europe ‐ including the EU’s increasing reliance on private sector standards bodies ‐ are now underway. The EU’s single market has not only integrated national markets, but has also shaped trading principles at the international level. The EU has exported its trade principles to third country markets and European companies have gained strategic advantages in influencing standards both internally within Europe and externally at the international and transatlantic level. Firms should invest resources and actively participate in setting standards to protect and increase their competitive advantage.

In this article we investigate how well the single market functions in practice by examining barriers to trade in goods markets and we discuss efforts to improve the governance of the single market. We use two unique datasets of specific trade obstacles to empirically examine which barriers continue to undermine EU cross-border trade, and whether non-judicial remedies have provided some degree of effective informal market governance in tackling trade impediments. Based on four hypotheses on country, industry and policy variables we test the probability of removing trade barriers in the pre-litigation phase of infringement proceedings rather than by Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) decisions. We then assess the usage and effectiveness of the informal mechanism Solvit to resolve trade obstacles in the single market. We conclude that informal mechanisms operate in the 'shadow of hierarchy' as judicialization remains the last resort option when informal co-operation does not achieve the desired goals.

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The conclusion summarizes the difficulties of achieving some form of accommodation between the interests of government, business, and society in constructing a single integrated market. The politics of market building is often a contentious process about the best ways to reconcile regulation and free trade. This involves not only the allocation of authority between different levels of government but also an acknowledgement that the corporate strategies are a major determinant of the nature and direction of European market integration. Using private actors for public purposes, the EU has delegated certain regulatory functions to European standards bodies as a substitute for direct government action. Comparisons with the construction of the American single market reveal a counterpart in the European Union, as both legal and regulatory intervention have been crucial in removing persistent obstacles to trade, and institutional arrangements have involved the strategic use of the private sector to integrate ‘uncommon’ markets.