Book contents
- Enterprise and Integration
- Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise
- Enterprise and Integration
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1How to Make a Market
- 2Coproducing Common Standards
- 3Regional Business Strategies
- 4Manufacturing the Single Market
- 5Financing Economic Transformations
- 6Commerce against the Social Single Market
- Conclusion
- AppendixEuropean Commission Directorates General 1985–1992
- Acknowledgments
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - How to Make a Market
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2026
Book contents
- Enterprise and Integration
- Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise
- Enterprise and Integration
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1How to Make a Market
- 2Coproducing Common Standards
- 3Regional Business Strategies
- 4Manufacturing the Single Market
- 5Financing Economic Transformations
- 6Commerce against the Social Single Market
- Conclusion
- AppendixEuropean Commission Directorates General 1985–1992
- Acknowledgments
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter locates business in the economic thinking of the Single Market Program, which transformed regional economic, commercial, competition, industrial, and social policies and remade the relationship between firms and European governance. It examines the wide-ranging approaches of European officials to enterprise as they made collective Community agreements and designed policies for the internal market. Cabinet documents and speeches from regional policymakers in the European Commission shed light on the tensions between promoting the regional economic activity of firms on the one hand and increasingly regulating the market and its actors to protect consumers, workers, and the environment on the other. Ultimately, it argues, the Commission saw Community-wide business activity as the key to achieving the market and its wider economic and social objectives. By supporting cross-border mergers, acquisitions, investment, partnerships, and the development of regional supply and value chains, regional policymakers aimed to reassert the power and influence of a united Europe in the global economy.
Information
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- Enterprise and IntegrationBig Business and the Making of the Single European Market, pp. 31 - 68Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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