After 32 years of the Single Market, EU admits the EU27 can’t even sell to themselves

Commission finally reveals “Terrible 10” barriers that most hinder movement of goods & services

Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2025

What chance for Sir Keir’s Summit aim of selling more to the EU by “slashing red tape and bureaucracy”?

With Sir Keir’s ‘Reset’ Summit barely 48 hours old, the EU Commission did something unprecedented in all the time we have been publishing reports on its activities:

On the top of Sir Keir’s stated aim of growing trade between the UK and the EU by making it easier, the EU dropped a bombshell which effectively ridiculed the whole purpose of his Summit in the first place. The Commission enumerated the “Terrible Ten” problems, showing how the Single Market does not work after 32 years of trying. (See below.)

With desperately unfortunate timing – and virtually unreported in the UK – the EU Commission exploded the entire premise of the Prime Minister’s strategy to put the UK firmly back inside the EU’s orbit. The Commission announced that after 32 years, the EU Single Market - one of the four ‘Jewels in the Crown’ of the empire - ‘hinders the free movement of goods and services and makes it difficult for businesses and citizens to take advantage’.

Two days after Sir Keir’s ‘Great EU Reset Summit’ last Monday, it was as if some radical Brexit group had infiltrated the basement of the Berlaymont Building in Brussels which houses the great and the good of the EU Empire, and had administered scopolamine (the ‘truth drug’) into its water supply.

Here is what the Prime Minister said after Monday’s ‘Summit’

Sir Keir has been criticised daily for his giveaways to the EU on Monday. In fact this was no more than window-dressing. A political event rather than a Summit with everything having been agreed in advance, up to and including the last-minute surrender of UK waters to the EU for the next 12 years. The Summit itself seemed to last just long enough for coffee to be served before the leaders were outside Lancaster House. This event was little more than a glorified photo call for Sir Keir and some of the EU’s leaders such as Ursula von der Leyen and President Macron.

There then followed the obligatory press conference where Sir Keir was able to speak almost emotionally, after all his years of fighting to overturn the Referendum result, and announce a series of loose agreements to take the UK back into the EU, piece by piece. Here are some of the excerpts:

• “It gives us unprecedented access to the EU market – the best of any country outside the EU or EFTA.”
• “This deal is good for both sides – and let me set out why it is good for Britain. We’ve struck an SPS deal to make food and agriculture trade with the EU cheaper and easier.” “Slashing red tape and bureaucracy.”
• “More money in people’s pockets.”
• “It will boost British exporters because, once again after a long absence, we’ll be able to sell great British burgers, shellfish and other products into the EU.”

And here is the EU’s damning admission just 48 hours later

It is rare for Brexit Facts4EU to quote extensively from an EU Commission document without having to interject with corrections, but in this case we are able to do so, as the Commission has for once told the truth.

What are these "ten terrible barriers"?

Over 32 years of the EU’s fabled ‘Single Market’

The EU’s Single Market officially started on 01 January 1993: 32 years ago. Billed as the enabling instrument for creating the second-largest single market in the world, (after the US), it has of course never been any such thing. From time to time, Commissioners accidentally admitted this in several ways, one of which we have shown before and will show again now, given that the UK’s is a services economy and this is so relevant to the United Kingdom.

We must once again point out as we have done many times over the years that the Single Market does not and never did work for services – the UK’s strength – by the EU’s own admission.

“The Single Market – this jewel that is all too often taken for granted –
does not function properly for services”

- Elżbieta Bieńkowska, EU Commissioner for the Single Market, 2017

Returning to the present day, without any apology or apparent realisation of the irony, the list of the ‘Terrible Ten’ issued by the Commission was followed by the statement that:

“The Commission will address the above barriers as a matter of priority.”

Readers may wish to attempt a guess of how many lifetimes might be required to put right the problems with a different major policy if the Commission did not address these as ‘a matter of priority’.

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What are the main measures proposed by the Strategy?

“The Strategy puts forward proposals to tackle existing barriers in the Single Market, with a focus on the 10 most harmful barriers identified. The identified barriers reflect the results of dedicated stakeholder consultation which complement other analyses on the Single Market, including the Commission's own Annual Single Market and Competitiveness report among others.”

The latter reports are the ones which we have reported upon over the years which place the UK as the member country who benefited least, or second-least, from the Single Market. Here is an example from the Commission's Annual Single Market and Competitiveness report for the UK's last year of membership of the EU (2020). It was typical of the ones before it.

The EU ranked its Single Market at the top of all its ‘greatest achievements’

It is important to be clear about the EU’s Single Market. It wasn’t a surprise that David Cameron, George Osborne, the BBC, and the rest of the Remain Establishment talked about the Single Market so much. The EU always rated it as its ‘greatest achievement’.

“EXECUTIVE SUMMARY”

“The Single Market ranks at the top among the greatest accomplishments of European integration.”

- EU Commission website, 2020

It would appear the Commission has had to reassess.

[ Sources: EU Commission, 21 May 2025 ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.

Brexit Facts4EU.Org, Bank Holiday Monday, 26 May 2025

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