Impact and efficiency of the internal market

The Committee welcomed the Commission’s announcement that it would submit an action plan for completing the single market in time for the introduction of the single currency, as advocated by the Committee since 1995. Since the ‘1999’ deadline left less than two years to complete this programme, the most complex outstanding problems should benefit from an additional period of time, but not beyond 2002. The Committee therefore underscored the need for cooperation between the public authorities of the Member States and other countries within the EEA, both directly and with the EU, for an effective relaunch of the commitment to complete the single market. The single market programme had to be viewed in the broader context of all Community policies; these instruments had to be coordinated as closely as possible in order to help the EU to meet the challenges of employment and economic globalisation.