SNS Economic Policy Group Report 2002. Competition without boundaries

Sweden in an integrated Europe. Conclusions and summary.

The EU’s internal market was inaugurated on 1 January 1993. Expectations were high, with a number of studies predicting that the creation of the single market would be associated with extensive, sustained welfare effects. The internal market would launch Europe out of the stagnation and ’eurosclerosis’ that had marked it since the end of the 1960s.

What became of these proud hopes in the 1990s? Can we now – nearly ten years after the implementation of the internal market – declare that more intense competition and deeper integration have led to a higher growth rate, increasing trade flows and more rapid restructuring?

This year’s Economic Policy Group Report focuses on competition, which has increasingly come to the fore in social debate, analysing the issues from the economic perspective.