Differentiation Within the Core: The Case of the Internal Market
Files
Description
The aim of this chapter is twofold. It seeks first to examine the nature and extent of certain kinds of legislative differentiation which have existed over the years between Member States of the European Community, focusing specifically on differentiating provisions within harmonisation directives in the internal market sphere. Secondly, it seeks in so doing to explore what kind of “core” commitment or set of commitments might be said to characterise European Community, now European Union, membership and effectively to limit the nature and extent of differentiation which ought to take place. The recent moves to institutionalise general provisions on differentiation and closer co-operation within the EU Treaties focus a number of questions about the aims and aspirations of the EU as a political entity. Over the years, the value of uniformity in the application of and adherence to Community law and policy has been institutionally asserted as one of the central tenets of the enterprise. At the heart of the original move towards the creation of the European Communities was a desire to pool some of the resources and capacities of nation states within Europe and to create a central supranational level of government responsible for enabling, in the first place, a market-place in common to exist between those states. The deeper reasons for the creation of this common market have always remained open to debate: whether, as a first step towards a European political union, to ensure greater peace and stability within Europe, to augment the capacities of the individual states to act on both domestic and international issues, or to create a united trading bloc capable of rivalling other world trading powers. But it is indisputable that what constituted the first major step in the process of shaping a European political entity, and what remains today as the central plank of the European Communities and Union, is the set of norms and policies making up what has variously been called the common, single or internal market.
Source Publication
Constitutional Change in the EU: From Uniformity to Flexibility?
Source Editors/Authors
Gráinne de Búrca, Joanne Scot
Publication Date
2000
Recommended Citation
de Búrca, Gráinne, "Differentiation Within the Core: The Case of the Internal Market" (2000). Faculty Chapters. 336.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-chapt/336
