Enforcement in the EU Single Market. CEPS Paperbacks. October 2012

Enforcement of and compliance with laws and regulations in the single market of the European Union are not only legally necessary, but also of crucial economic importance for business, consumers and the EU economy at large. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the current EU enforcement landscape and its functioning. The classical infringement route via the Court of Justice of the European Union remains critical as a last resort, but it is increasingly seen as very slow and costly. The new emphasis relies heavily on a range of pre-infringement as well as preventive initiatives that prevent new technical barriers from arising. They also tend to be far less costly and more rapid, informal and effective in pursuing a properly functioning internal market. These improvements are welcome news for the single market, yet EU enforcement still has problems to solve, for example in the area of public procurement.

Mellowing Meroni: Hows ESMA can help build the single market. CEPS Commentaries, 18 February 2014

In examining the long-awaited opinion given January 22nd by the CJEU in the case concerning the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), this Commentary argues that the ruling is important for the insights it yields into the modern understanding of the Meroni non-delegation doctrine. The authors, Jacques Pelkmans and Marta Simoncini, aim to extract the potential implications of the ESMA case for the place and significance of the Meroni doctrine in building up the single market. They demonstrate that the ESMA case is yet another manifestation of a slow process of “mellowing Meroni’, which is a critical condition for a new single market strategy aiming to end the remaining fragmentation of the single market – not only in financial markets but also in network industries – and to ensure its ‘proper functioning’.