Some Polish Members of the European Parliament argue that the European Union’s single market needs reform to reduce barriers to trade and cross-border services. They say the bloc should either apply the principle of mutual recognition more effectively or further harmonise national rules, although full harmonisation across all member states could be slow and bureaucratic.
Polish MEPs also point to uneven implementation of EU law across the bloc and insufficient cooperation between national authorities as major obstacles for businesses operating across borders.
“The EU single market should be a treaty-based principle. A product or service offered in one member state should be able to be offered in another without difficulty or restrictions,” Piotr Müller, a Polish MEP from the Law and Justice party, told Newseria. “Unfortunately, we often see member states introducing various domestic regulations that mean, for example, that a product from Poland cannot enter Germany, France or another country without additional inspections or extra requirements.”
The EU single market was created in 1993 and is based on the free movement of goods, services, people and capital — the bloc’s four fundamental freedoms. It is intended to support economic growth, competition and access to a market of around 450 million consumers, including for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Müller said the European Conservatives and Reformists Group supports a stronger application of mutual recognition. Under this approach, products lawfully manufactured and marketed in one EU country should generally be allowed to enter another member state without new barriers.
“As the European Conservatives and Reformists, we support the principle of mutual recognition,” he said. “We want a product produced in one country to be able to enter another country in the European Union without barriers. That is what we agreed to. Yet we also see many regulations introduced within the Community that, in practice, increase barriers.”
In April, during an informal meeting of EU heads of state and government in Cyprus, the country’s president, acting on behalf of the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union, together with the presidents of the European Parliament and the European Commission, signed the “One Europe, One Market” action plan.
The initiative sets out targets and methods for implementation by the end of 2027. Its stated goal is to stimulate economic growth in Europe through legislative proposals, agreements between EU lawmakers and quarterly reviews designed to monitor progress.
Müller cited transport rules as an example of how policy can restrict cross-border competition. He argued that regulations adopted in previous years had made it harder for Polish transport companies to compete fairly in other EU markets.
“Examples of barriers include the transport directive adopted years ago, which limited healthy competition for our transport companies across the European Union,” he said. “There are also other ways of restricting services or products, such as introducing additional social or environmental criteria that do not apply throughout the EU, but only in selected countries. This creates real barriers.”
European institutions aim to make significant progress in 2026 and, at the latest, by the end of 2027 across five strategic areas of the action plan. These include simplifying rules, creating a more integrated single market by removing the 10 most harmful barriers, supporting long-term trade relations, lowering energy costs, advancing decarbonisation and supporting digital and artificial intelligence transformation.
Müller said policymakers face a choice between greater legal harmonisation and a broader use of mutual recognition.
“We support the principle of mutual recognition for services and products,” he said. “Harmonising all regulations in the European Union is a lengthy process. On the other hand, it often creates another layer of bureaucracy, only this time not in one or two countries, but in all 27 at once.”
EU leaders have said that concrete and measurable progress should be achieved by March 2027 in preventing new barriers to the four freedoms and removing existing ones. The agenda includes six priority measures, such as a proposed 28th legal regime for companies, known as “EU Inc.”, stronger safeguards for placing products on the market and efforts to address fragmented labelling and packaging requirements.
According to Müller, one of the main problems is that the same EU law can be applied differently in different member states.
“We observe a mechanism in which the same European law is applied differently across EU countries,” he said. “This can result from national implementation that is overly strict. Sometimes officials implementing European law add something of their own just in case, which is obviously absurd.”
He also argued that member states are often reluctant to enforce EU rules against one another.
“A state has the right to sue another state for failing to comply with rules that it itself enforces,” Müller said. “In many areas, one state behaves fairly while another does not comply with those rules. In theory, the European Commission should pursue such a state before the Court of Justice of the European Union, but it often does not do so for political reasons. This can become a kind of competitive advantage for a country that does not apply those rules.”
The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which has applied across the European Union since 2018, is one example of how implementation and interpretation can vary at national level.
“Member states should motivate one another and encourage compliance with the standards they adopted themselves,” Müller said. “GDPR is a good example. Someone living in Belgium may often see a person’s first and last name displayed on a mailbox. This follows Belgian law. In Poland today, something like that would be unimaginable.”
The debate over the future of the single market is likely to intensify as the EU seeks to reduce regulatory fragmentation, improve competitiveness and make it easier for companies to operate across borders without duplicating compliance procedures.
