But I have recently had cause to pause and reconsider my support for the single market. It has been implemented through each member state passing countless regulations and directives from the central European institutions. Everything from the flavor of sausages to the sizes of servings has been carefully decreed and monitored. I agree with the end that the single market has- trade and mobility free from impediment. But I decry the interventionist means to which this end has been pursued.
Trade is a naturally occurring process.
The European countries have always traded a lot with each other and other countries where mutual benefit ensued. There is a naturally-occurring incentive to find ways to develop this trade more widely and deeply. These bodies use clever measures such as automatic reciprocity- as soon as one country opens up a market to one, it becomes open in both directions to all trading entities. Instead, these trade issues have become political arguments, doomed never to be resolved at the level of the European institutions. Only business people looking to trade for mutual benefit can work out settlements to these issues.