Gormley, Laurence W. --- "The internation market: history and evolution" [2006] ELECD 408; in Shuibhne, Nic Niamh (ed), "Regulating the Internal Market" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Regulating the Internal Market

Editor(s): Shuibhne, Nic Niamh

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845420338

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: The internation market: history and evolution

Author(s): Gormley, Laurence W.

Extract:

1. The internal market: history and
evolution
Laurence W. Gormley

INTRODUCTION
The term `internal market' has a long and honourable history; at various times
deserving its own Directorate-General within the Commission, at other times
linked with industrial affairs. The concept of an internal market was well
understood by the Court,1 particularly in relation to taxation, and by the
Community legislature;2 but it was not until preparations commenced leading
to the presentation of the famous White Paper Completing the Internal
Market3 that the term came into wider and popular use.4 The legal concentra-
tion hitherto had been on the term `common market', the establishment of
which was one of the two means by which the aims of the then EEC Treaty
were to be achieved.5 That the phrase `internal market' is less extensive in its
ambit than the phrase `common market' is no surprise,6 although the distinc-
tion does not always seem to have been understood by the Court in more
recent times.7


1 Case 54/84 Paul v Hauptzollamt Emmerich [1985] ECR I-915, esp. at paras
14­15.
2 Thus the heading internal market was an already long-established heading in
the Bulletin of the European Communities and already featured in the Conclusions of
various European Council meetings.
3 COM (85) 310 final.
4 The phrase `internal market' specifically emphasised the distinction from
aspects related to external commercial policy.
5 The other being originally the progressive approximation of the economic
policies of ...