Module 5

The internal market: free movement of goods, persons, services and capital, and the rules on competition and state aid

The internal market is the heart of the Union’s law and the reason most businesses meet it. Article 26 of the TFEU describes an area without internal frontiers in which goods, persons, services and capital move freely, and almost all the Court of Justice’s best-known rulings on trade come from that promise. The method is the same across the four freedoms: a national measure that hinders movement across a border is prohibited unless the state can justify it on a recognised ground and shows that it is proportionate. This module sets out the four freedoms in turn, with the goods rules in most detail because the Court built its general method there, then turns to the competition rules that stop businesses and states from rebuilding by agreement or subsidy the barriers the treaties took away. The aim is a scheme of three questions you can apply to any problem: is there a restriction, is it justified, and is it proportionate?

General education on European Union law, using invented people and businesses and abstract member states. It states the Treaty framework and landmark decisions in simplified form, and it is not legal advice. Rules change and national implementation differs. Consult a qualified lawyer in the place that matters.