The situation is different in anonymous markets with small enterprises and consumers. They need institutions to defend and protect their property rights. The European Single Market has been conquered by these actors only to a limited degree due to a deficient institutional infrastructure of law enforcement. Our study tries to describe the effectivity and eventually the weaknesses of this infrastructure in situations of minor everyday cross-border disputes. The typical everyday dispute is a consumer claim but all observations also apply for small claims between firms or between firms as claimants and the consumer.
Law is a basic instrument of European integration.
Most studies on the implementation of Community law remain on the first two levels whereas most difficulties and most differences between Member States arise within the following phases. A realistic picture of the European legal system therefore is far from being available. This page was engineered to function most effectively within the confines of the web browser Netscape 3.01 or higher.