Well, perhaps. And yet, an obituary is also a moment for an honest reflection on someone’s work and achievements. And three decades is surely enough time to judge anything. And it should be clear to anyone by now that the single market has not achieved anything like the promises that were made for it. Just take a look at some of the evidence.
To start with, intra-EU trade, that is the flow of goods between different member states, which should have been boosted massively by the single market, has scarcely moved. It rose to about 22pc of manufactured goods in the early 1990s, solidifying a trend that started in the 1960s and 1970s, and after that remained completely static.
Next, instead of accelerating, growth has slowed down, certainly compared to the United States, and now compared with China and increasingly with India as well.
As a percentage of global GDP, the EU has fallen from around 30pc two decades ago to to roughly 15pc now, and while the departure of the UK, and the rising prosperity of other regions played a part in that, it was the consistently low growth of most of the EU that is by far the main explanation for its relative decline.
“The actual verifiable impact of the single market has mostly fallen short of the (in part highly optimistic) forecasts,” admitted Deutsche Bank in an analysis to mark its 20th anniversary a decade ago. That was certainly true then, and 10 years nothing has happened to change that verdict.
