The EU internal market in the next decade - quo vadis?

Abstract

This edited book results from an academic Jean Monnet Chair Project under the academic direction of the editor, Professor Ivan Sammut, entitled The EU and its Citizens – Knowing your rights under EU law. The Project is run by the Faculty of Laws of the University of Malta through the European and Comparative Law Department. The European Internal Market is one of the EU’s greatest achievements. It has fuelled economic growth and made the everyday lives of European businesses and consumers easier. It comprises the 27 Member States and sees the participation of the other states of the EEA plus other third countries that are either seeking membership of the EU or are seeking close trade agreements. The EU’s economic Union, called the ‘Internal Market’, is not just about the four traditional freedoms of goods, persons, services, and capital but is also about the harmonisation and/or unification of various other aspects of economic policy. The EU started as a common market and is constantly evolving into a stronger economic union since the Maastricht amendments of the early 1990s. However, the evolution of the Internal Market does not stop. With the widening and deepening of competencies after the Lisbon Amendments 2009, the momentum is still ongoing more than a decade later. The Department of European and Comparative Law within the Faculty of Laws of the University of Malta has embarked on a project to examine the current state of the Union vis-à-vis the EU’s Internal Market and the way forward. This edited volume presents selected essays dealing with the state of affairs of the Internal Market at present and in the future (full details below). The authors are either resident academics at the Faculty or practitioners who work in the respective field of law and give their services to the mentioned Faculty. The work is directly relevant to practitioners and academics working in the field covered by the selected topics. Also, it will prove highly relevant to undergraduate and post-graduate students who want to read further and supplement their basic textbooks. Above all, the work should interest any stakeholder in the EU’s Internal Market. The book is divided into three parts. Part I focuses on citizens’ rights, while Part II looks at citizens’ rights from the point of view of digital rights. Part III focuses more on other substantive issues of the Internal Market. This edited book represents the work undertaken by the University of Malta during this Project. The opinions of the papers in the