... with other countries. The keenest supporters of the European Union view the single market as one more step towards the creation of a genuine economic, monetary and possibly political Union. The push for a single market has come primarily from European business. Their ultimate goal is the creation of a single European market encompassing about 400 million people, larger than North America and Japan, thus giving European corporations an edge in global competition. During the 1970s and 1980s, it was evident that Japanese and U.S.-based multinationals were increasing their dominance because of their larger, domestic markets; they could afford to invest more in electronics, biotechnology, new fibres etc (ie, the new growth industries of the day). In 1983, the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT) - consisting of 45 'captains of industry' from large European transnational corporations - was created with the purpose of reviving European integration and shaping it to ...

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