The single market: At the service of a values-based or a valueless EU?

This paper examines whether the European Union’s single market continues to serve as an instrument for advancing the Union’s foundational values or whether it is increasingly being deployed as a pragmatic tool in a valueless geopolitical order. It argues that, while recent crises such as Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reaffirmed the single market’s capacity to promote solidarity, the rule of law and collective resilience through coordinated EU action, later developments suggest a worrying drift toward transactional politics. The 2025 ‘Turnberry accord’ with the US and the EU’s muted reaction to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza reveal a shift away from a values-based international posture towards a survivalist, interestdriven pragmatism. The paper concludes that using the single market as leverage in a value-free global environment may erode the EU’s own normative foundations and weaken its internal legal and institutional framework, threatening the long-term integrity and credibility of European integration.