European Single Market in the context of "Data.europa.eu"

The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe. The Union has a total area of 4,233,255 km (1,634,469 sq mi) and an estimated population of more than 450 million as of 2025. The EU is often described as a sui generis political entity combining characteristics of both a federation and a confederation.

Containing 5.5% of the world population in 2023, EU member states generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of around €17.935 trillion in 2024, accounting for approximately one sixth of global economic output. Its cornerstone, the Customs Union, paved the way to establishing an internal single market based on standardised legal framework and legislation that applies in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where the states have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market; enact legislation in justice and home affairs; and maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries, and regional development.

The European Union's (EU) Common Commercial Policy, or EU Trade Policy, is the policy whereby EU Member States delegate authority to the European Commission to negotiate their external trade relations, with the aim of increasing trade amongst themselves and their bargaining power vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The Common Commercial Policy is logically necessitated by the existence of the Customs Union, which in turn is also the foundation upon which the Single Market and Monetary Union were later established.

Switzerland is not a member state of the European Union (EU). It is associated with the Union through a series of bilateral treaties in which Switzerland has adopted various provisions of European Union law in order to participate in the Union's single market, without joining as a member state. Among Switzerland's neighbouring countries, all but one (the microstate Liechtenstein) are EU member states.

The freedom of movement for workers is a policy chapter of the acquis communautaire of the European Union. The free movement of workers means that nationals of any member state of the European Union can take up an employment in another member state on the same conditions as the nationals of that particular member state. In particular, no discrimination based on nationality is allowed. It is part of the free movement of persons and one of the four economic freedoms: free movement of goods, services, labour and capital. Article 45 TFEU (ex 39 and 48) states that:

The right to free movement has both 'horizontal' and 'vertical' direct effect, such that a citizen of any EU state can invoke the right, without more, in an ordinary court, against other persons, both governmental and non-governmental.

The Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas (DCFTA) are three free trade areas established between the European Union, and Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine respectively. The DCFTAs are part of each country's EU Association Agreement. They allow Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine access to the European Single Market in selected sectors and grant EU investors in those sectors the same regulatory environment in the associated country as in the EU. The agreements with Moldova and Georgia have been ratified and officially entered into force in July 2016, although parts of them were already provisionally applied. The agreement with Ukraine was provisionally applied since 1 January 2016 and formally entered into force on 1 September 2017.

Unlike standard free trade areas, the DCFTA is aimed to offer the associated country the "four freedoms" of the EU Single Market: free movement of goods, services, capital, and people. Movement of people however, is in form of visa-free regime for short stay travel, while movement of workers remains within the remit of the EU Member States. The DCFTA is an "example of the integration of a Non-EEA-Member into the EU Single Market".

The Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, sometimes referred to as the Irish border or British–Irish border, runs for 499 km (310 mi) from Lough Foyle in the north-west of Ireland to Carlingford Lough in the north-east, separating the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland.

Border markings are inconspicuous, in common with many inter-state borders in the European Union. As the two states share a Common Travel Area and (as of 2021) Northern Ireland (the only exception within the UK and only in some respects) and the Republic of Ireland are participants in the European Single Market, the border is essentially an open one, allowing free passage of people since 1923 and of goods since 1993. There are circa 270 public roads that cross the border. Following the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, this border is also the frontier between the EU and a non-member country. The Brexit withdrawal agreement commits all involved parties to maintaining an open border in Ireland, so that (in many respects) the trade frontier is the Irish Sea between the two islands. This de facto division of the United Kingdom is described, especially by Unionists, as "the Irish Sea border".

The Mechanism for Cooperation and Verification (CVM) was a safeguard measure invoked by the European Commission when a new member or acceding state of the European Union failed to implement commitments undertaken in the context of the accession negotiations in the fields of the Area of freedom, security and justice or internal market policy. The European Commission has decided to not use CVM anymore. Instead, the Commission expects every new member to join the EU without deficiencies that would require special monitoring.

In the European Union, competition law promotes the maintenance of competition within the European Single Market by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies to ensure that they do not create cartels and monopolies that would damage the interests of society.

European competition law today derives mostly from articles 101 to 109 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), as well as a series of Regulations and Directives. Four main policy areas include:

The Irish Sea border is an informal term for the trade border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. It was specified by the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol of the Brexit withdrawal agreement (February 2020), was refined by the Joint Committee in December 2020, and came into effect on 1 January 2021 following the end of the Brexit transition period. As a result of the Agreement, Northern Ireland remains aligned to the European Single Market in a limited way for goods, whilst remaining part of the United Kingdom customs territory and the UK internal market. Its effect is that the need for customs checks on the Irish border has been avoided, and a hard border has not been re-established.

This Irish Sea border was the option taken by Prime Minister Johnson in October 2019 to break the impasse of the "Brexit Trilemma" (of three competing objectives: no hard border on the island; no Irish Sea border; and no British participation in the European Single Market and the European Union Customs Union: it is not possible to have all three.)

Since 1945, immigration to the United Kingdom, controlled by British immigration law and to an extent by British nationality law, has been significant, in particular from the former territories of the British Empire and the European Union.

Since the accession of the United Kingdom to the European Communities in the 1970s and the creation of the EU in the early 1990s, immigrants relocated from member states of the European Union, exercising one of the European Union's Four Freedoms. Immigration to and from Central and Eastern Europe has increased since 2004 with the accession to the European Union of eight Central and Eastern European states, since there is free movement of labour within the EU. In 2021, since Brexit came into effect, previous EU citizenship's right to newly move to and reside in the UK on a permanent basis does not apply anymore.

E numbers, short for Europe numbers, are codes for substances used as food additives, including those found naturally in many foods, such as vitamin C, for use within the European Union (EU) and European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Commonly found on food labels, their safety assessment and approval are the responsibility of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The fact that an additive has an E number implies that its use was at one time permitted in products for sale in the European Single Market; some of these additives are no longer allowed today.

Having a single unified list for food additives was first agreed upon in 1962 with food colouring. In 1964, the directives for preservatives were added, in 1970 antioxidants were added, in 1974 emulsifiers, stabilisers, thickeners and gelling agents were added as well.

Immigration to Europe has a long history, but increased substantially after World War II. Western European countries, especially, saw high growth in immigration post 1945, and many European nations today (particularly those of the EU-15) have sizeable immigrant populations, both of European and non-European origin. In contemporary globalization, migrations to Europe have accelerated in speed and scale. Over the last decades, there has been an increase in negative attitudes towards immigration, and many studies have emphasized marked differences in the strength of anti-immigrant attitudes among European countries.

Beginning in 2004, the European Union granted EU citizens freedom of movement and residence within the EU, and the term "immigrant" has since been used to refer to non-EU citizens, meaning that EU citizens are not to be defined as immigrants within EU territory. The European Commission defines "immigration" as the action by which a person from a non-EU country establishes his or her usual residence in the territory of an EU country for a period that is or is expected to be at least twelve months. Between 2010 and 2013, around 1.4 million non-EU nationals, excluding asylum seekers and refugees, immigrated into the EU each year using regular means, with a slight decrease since 2010.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE; French: Alliance des Démocrates et des Libéraux pour l'Europe, ADLE) was a transnational alliance between two European political parties, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party and the European Democratic Party. ALDE had political groups in the European Parliament, the EU Committee of the Regions, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. There were assorted independents in these groups as well as national-level affiliate parties of the European-level parties.

The pro-European platform of ALDE espoused liberal economics, and supported for European integration and the European single market.