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V1.210 The EU Single Market

One of the principal aims of the EU was to establish an internal market¹, ie 'an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is ensured'². The Sixth Directive³ required the Council to adopt further directives on the common system of value added tax⁴. In particular, it was committed to 'achieve complete parallelism of the national value added tax systems' and thereby 'achieve the aim of abolishing the imposition of tax on importation and the remission of tax on exportation in trade between member states, while ensuring the neutrality of those taxes as regards the origin of goods and services'⁵.

The completion of the Internal Market became a political priority in the early 1980s⁶ and saw legal expression in the Single European Act⁷. This required the Community to adopt measures with the aim of progressively establishing the Internal Market over a period expiring on 31 December 1992⁸.

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