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The EU single market for network industries has not been accomplished after more than three decades. The clearest shortcoming of this incipient EU internal market is the lack of EU independent regulators. This design failure reflects the uneasy equilibrium between the political (un)willingness of the Member States and EU institutions, legal constraints emerging from EU case-law and economic concerns. After providing economic evidence of a failing single market in network industries and of the awareness of this failure in EU institutions, we discuss the problematic EU governance in these sectors, followed by the Meroni doctrine (hindering the single market) and its recent revision by the Court of Justice. The adaptation of NRAs in EU-wide networks together with the emergence of weak EU agencies has helped to make NRAs more EU-oriented, but this is insufficient to arrive at a single market for network industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the centrality of the single market to the EU. Its main conclusion is that the single market will remain central to the Union in future and that although it is not immune to crises, because it is the Union’s hard core and has powerful governance, serious erosion is unlikely. The paper examines the centrality of the single market by analysing in-depth the functional logic of market integration and the progress and deficits that characterise the Union’s market regime. The paper then explores the meaning of the internal market for EMU and argues that the single market is the ‘E’ in EMU. The issue of the euro ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ is addressed. The paper ends by asking if the single market is resilient against crises and concludes in the affirmative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]