The main focus of this essay will be placed on competence and harmonisation of the EU to form the Internal Market. The essay will look at Treaty Articles 3 and 26 of the TFEU, it will then examine integration, competence and harmonisation and why those elements are significant elements for forming an internal market. It will study the case Tobacco Advertising (Case C-376/98, Germany v European Parliament and Council [2000] and the developments since the case for the European Unions Internal Market.
Article 26(2) of the TFEU states; ‘The internal market shall comprise an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is ensured in accordance with the provisions of the Treaties’1 and article 3 of the Treaty states that the Union will establish an internal market. The benefits of free trade in an internal market are summarised as follows ‘free trade allows for specialization, specialization leads to comparative advantage and comparative advantage leads to economies of scale which maximize consumer welfare and ensure the most effective use of world-wide resources’.2
There have been different levels of intensity of market integration, and each one introduced in their own right, as a way of trying to end up with a ‘full union’. The different states of integration are as follows;
Free trade area (FTA)- Member States will remove all impediments to free movement of goods among themselves but each state retains the autonomy to regulate its trading relations with non-member states. Customs Union (CU)- FTA plus common external policy in respect of non-member state for example a