The prognosis isn't too daring: most Europeans will probably not notice this big birthday.

At the turn of the year there are other important issues in Europe - the war in Ukraine, the lack of natural gas, the painfully high inflation.

Marcus Theurer

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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And yet the upcoming anniversary is a pretty good reason to celebrate: 30 years ago, on New Year's Eve on January 1, 1993, the European single market came into force.

"In Europe, freedom should now be limitless," wrote the business journalist Hans D. Barbier in the FAZ at the time. He added skeptically: "That shouldn't be taken quite literally."

The internal market is as natural in the European Union today as running water and refrigerators.

Material for the social studies class: Name the four basic freedoms in the European internal market.

Correct answer: free trade in goods and services, free movement of capital and free movement of labor across Member State borders.

For more prosperity

For Guntram Wolff, the domestic market is “the white elephant in the room”.

It is so big and important for the EU that, paradoxically, nobody really notices it anymore, says the economist.

He is director of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin and was head of the Bruegel think tank in Brussels for many years until the summer.

Wolff considers the establishment of the common market to be the "most formative achievement" in the European confederation of states.

"China does not take the EU seriously as a negotiating partner because of its moral values, but because of the internal market," says Munich historian Kiran Klaus Patel, an expert on European history since the Second World War.

The domestic market is one of the three dominant economic blocs in the world alongside the USA and China

(see chart)

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There are few things in the EU that are less controversial than the single market.

Maybe that's why it seems so inconspicuous because everyone agrees on it.

The idea of ​​the single market is simple.

It already appeared in the Treaty of Rome, the birth certificate of the federation of states from 1957 - without being realized at the time, of course.

The idea is: Customs duties in goods traffic, but also other obstacles such as different standards and rules affect trade between European countries.

If they are eliminated, this will ensure cheaper goods prices, but also more competition across national borders and thus more productivity, in short: more prosperity.

Three years ago, the Bertelsmann Foundation had economic researchers calculate how much richer the single market would make Europeans.

According to this calculation, the Germans, for example, have an increase in income of around 1050 euros per inhabitant and year.

Above all, regions in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, which have a powerful export economy, benefit particularly strongly from the domestic market.

In eastern Germany, however, the economic advantages are much smaller than in the south.

This all sounds like dry economic theory.

And numbers are patient.

If you want to know what the internal market means in real life, you can talk to Heiko Sonnekalb, for example.

He is the managing director of a medium-sized company in Saarlouis, Saarland.

Lakal GmbH, which manufactures and sells roller shutters and gates, has its headquarters just a few kilometers from the German-French border.

Sonnekalb is 51 years old.

The entrepreneur explains that his father was still working as a customs officer.

A long time ago, the border has long since become invisible.

Sonne-kalb now lives in France and commutes to the company in Saarlouis every day.

That's what the majority of Lakal's 320 employees do.

Conversely, France is the most important sales market for the German company.

Sonnekalb generates three quarters of its sales in the neighboring country and the rest in its home country of Germany.

Since the turn of the millennium, Lakal's revenues have more than quadrupled.

"Made in Germany" is still a seal of quality for customers in France, reports Heiko Sonnekalb.