9 july 2010, moving the market

I wax and wane on the economist's coverage of europe: an admirable zealot on pushing forward the single market, but populist and naive in not seeming to understand the political implications of that. This week they highlighted mario monti's excellent report on how to broaden what is the largest economic area in the world. He talks about rejoining the lost battle on services, and creating a single market in digital, low-carbon, audio-visual and healthcare. As the current successful incarnation has, this would both make the cake of european growth bigger and redistribute it to more efficient and innovative firms. However, nothing can or should happen without political consensus, and monti perceptively notes both "integration fatigue", eroding the appetite for more europe and "market fatigue", reducing confidence in the mechanism itself. It is ironic that the single market is less popular than ever (see the paralysis of contentment, just when europe needs it more than ever.