In 2023, Spain and Belgium asked Enrico Letta, former Italian Prime Minister and president of the Jacques Delors Institute, to investigate how the European single market can function better. The report, “Much more than a market,” was published in April 2024.
The Letta report involved over 400 meetings in 65 European cities, engaging national governments, businesses, trade unions, and civil society groups. This extensive consultation shaped the report's comprehensive proposals.
The report is structured around six chapters, focusing on essential areas for the future of the European internal market. The internal market must adapt to new global realities, emphasizing speed, security, and solidarity. Key proposals include:
- The Fifth Freedom: Placing research, innovation, and education at the core of the internal market by creating a European Knowledge Commons, promoting researcher mobility, and developing a European educational area.
- Financing Strategic Goals: Addressing the financing needs for a green and digital transition by mobilizing private capital and creating a Savings and Investments Union.
- Scaling Up the Internal Market: Enhancing the market's scale to maintain global influence by elevating strategic sectors such as finance, energy, electronic communications, transport, healthcare, defense, and space to the European level.
- Sustainable and Inclusive Growth: Ensuring that the benefits of the internal market are widely shared, emphasizing cohesion policy to support "freedom to remain" alongside free movement.
- Reducing Regulatory Burden: Simplifying regulations to enhance efficiency and competitiveness, especially for SMEs, by promoting maximum harmonization and mutual recognition.
- External Dimension: Enhancing the internal market's external dimension by addressing economic security, refining trade policy, and managing relationships with key strategic partners.
The Letta report is set to have a major influence on the EU's agenda in the coming years. The European Council has already asked future Presidencies to move forward in implementing its recommendations. More detailed analyses will have to examine the place given to the social dimension in this vision for a new, strengthened single market.