Andreadakis, Stelios --- "Regulatory Competition or Harmonisation: The Dilemma, the Alternatives and the Prospect of Reflexive Harmonisation" [2012] ELECD 347; in Andenas, Mads; Andersen, Baasch Camilla (eds), "Theory and Practice of Harmonisation" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Theory and Practice of Harmonisation

Editor(s): Andenas, Mads; Andersen, Baasch Camilla

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849800013

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: Regulatory Competition or Harmonisation: The Dilemma, the Alternatives and the Prospect of Reflexive Harmonisation

Author(s): Andreadakis, Stelios

Number of pages: 13

Extract:

3. Regulatory competition or
harmonisation: the dilemma, the
alternatives and the prospect of
reflexive harmonisation
Stelios Andreadakis1

The ultimate goal of the European Community is the establishment of an internal
market. A common market will be achieved when all obstacles for cross-border
activities of business in Europe are eliminated and when the frontiers between
the European countries are nothing more than signboards by the road.2 As-
suming that a free internal market is becoming a reality, the next challenge is
to ensure that this market is well-organized, stable and efficient. To that end,
an important focus of the EU policy is to develop and implement mechanisms
that enhance the efficiency and competitiveness of business across Europe. In
order to do so, it will have to be able efficiently to restructure and move across
borders, adapt its capital structures to changing needs and attract investors from
many Member States and other countries.3
In the quest for the best path towards the achievement of economic and
political integration and for the best mechanism for the creation of an efficient
regulatory environment, a number of alternatives to conventional territorially-
based regulation are taken into consideration. These alternatives fall somewhere
along a spectrum of models of international securities regulation, with the
concept of regulatory competition at one end and harmonisation at the other.4
Thus, the main subject of this chapter is the interaction between regulatory com-
petition and its main conflicting theory, harmonisation. Do any of these seem

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