A force for good - or something more complicated? We examine the positive and the negative in the single market with the MEPs Evelyne Gebhardt and Jürgen Klute.

360°: Single market pros and cons

The single market is one of  the EU's greatest achievements.

Trade and competition barriers between  Member States were gradually abolished,

This is how the EU  presents its favourite child,

but what has the single market  actually achieved?

Given that there are 24 million  unemployed people in Europe today,

this question is justified,  crisis aside.

I will now put this question to my guests.

With me in the studio  I have two German MEPs.

Evelyne Gebhardt, hello and welcome.  -Hello.

And Jürgen Klute.  Welcome to the studio.

The first question,  as mentioned at the beginning.

What has this single market  actually achieved?

If you put aside  your political background,

what has the single market achieved,  Evelyne Gebhardt?

The single market  has achieved a lot for the citizens.

A wide range of products.  When we go to a market today,

we can buy items like peppers that  our grandparents were not familiar with.

whether it's an iron,  a car or a washing machine.

of our possibilities for having our rights  acknowledged in case of a problem,

so there are quite a few positive aspects.

OK, but in the early 90s we were told that  this single market would expand

and that by 2000 we would have  created an extra 2.5 million jobs.

Today, the statistics  do not really support this.

Can we really say  its effects are only positive?

I wouldn't say only positive,  but I agree with Ms Gebhardt,

Today, we can travel without a passport  or exchanging currency in the eurozone.

This is positive  from a tourism perspective.

From a critical point of view,  many jobs were initially lost.

It's debatable whether they were useful,

but we've done away with customs officials  and jobs in the crossborder economy.

We raised these issues before  the introduction of the single market,

that there would be job losses  and new jobs would need to be created.

not all lost jobs have been replaced  by new ones. This, too, is reality.

Has the social aspect been neglected  in this programme?

You know Mr Bolkestein whose name  is familiar to most Europeans.

Yes, exactly, I've had  numerous clashes with Mr Bolkestein,

because of course it's a myth  that the single market can create jobs.

You can create jobs by carrying out  a positive growth policy.

By ensuring that we create jobs  in renewable energies, for example.

Looking at areas like care for the  elderly, for instance, can create jobs.

That's not due to the single market,  but to the political approach within it.

The single market had its beginnings  in 1957 and slowly evolved.

I suggest we watch a short report on  its history by my colleague Andreas Dietl.

It was a long and winding road before  this driver could bring his goods

across the border between France  and Belgium without even having to stop.

Back in the 1950s, Europeans protested  for border controls to be abolished.

The Paris Treaty,  which came into force in 1953,

between the six founding members of  what later became the European Union.

But citizens didn't yet benefit directly  from this very limited common market.

wanted to create  a general common market,

often against considerable resistance  from France.

It took a series of conferences  before statesmen could sign

on 25 March 1957  on the Capitoline Hill in Rome

the treaties that were named  after the Italian capital.

This was the founding document  of the European Economic Community

which aimed to create a full  customs union between members

and a single market with free movement  of goods, services, capital and people.

It's one of the success stories of the EU,

or indeed the original  European Communities.

When we are talking about  the single market, what is it actually?

It's the movement of goods,  the free access to jobs for citizens.

It's the freedom  to provide services in the EU.

While the advantages of moving goods  across Europe are clear,

that wasn't always the case  for capital or services.

When it comes to  the provision of services

many prejudices exist  in the Member States.

In every Member State people think,  'Our system is the best'.

The problem is that there is  a whole network,

a spider's web of barriers  erected by Member States,

sometimes for historical reasons,  to stop businesses from other countries.

While the internal market now covers  the fields envisaged by the EU's founders,

I think we must guard against a feeling  of complacency that this job is done.

The single market  is taken for granted by people

because they take advantage  of its benefits.

Those benefits aren't always  merely economic.

If we look back on our history,  the last few centuries,

there is not a single period  in this geographic area,

that has gone for so long  without any acts of war.

This is the most wonderful thing  we could give to the people with the EU

for the trees of Europe's  sometimes tricky border-crossing rules.

Evelyne Gebhardt, you said everyone  always thinks their system is the best.

How difficult was it  to create a single market?

There's a wide range of actors  blocking it,