Introduction: Europe’s single market in US perspective

Abstract After receding from the headlines for a long time, the Single Market has returned to the forefront of the European Union agenda. The project to pursue the “four freedoms” of goods, services, labor and capital remains over shadowed by calls to develop new EU capacities for strategic autonomy in security and economic affairs, but it is once again widely praised as a key tool—if still a contested one—to promote European competitiveness and power. This special issue assembles a group of experts to speak to these discussions by illuminating aspects of the Single Market’s development and current functioning. Two distinctive moves frame its contributions. One is the use of comparative perspective, setting EU features alongside those of the other vast internal market of the Western world—the United States. Not only does comparison help us to highlight what stands out about EU economic governance, it offers some insight into the evolving US politics that are a crucial external condition for Europe’s choices. The other is a focus on normative goals and trade-off s in internal-market governance. Any project to promote multi-jurisdictional market integration raises major issues about the promotion and distribution of economic gains, the provision of effective democratic government, and respect and tolerance for diverse populations. Using leverage from similarities and differences with the US, we highlight some of the normative principles at work in Europe’s Single Market. This introduction frames key normative trade-off s around the governance of internal openness in multilevel systems, makes the case for the EU-US comparison about them, and surveys the contributing articles on harmonization and regulatory competition, digital markets, competition policy, commercial and personal mobility, and the delegation of democratic authority.