By increasing levels of competition, the Internal Market can do much to ensure that firms are quick to adopt innovative technologies, increase quality and reduce prices for consumers, and as such the Internal Market is central to the EU's aim of enhancing its competitiveness vis-à-vis its main trading partners. However, some key economic indicators suggest that the Internal Market's impact on competition has recently slowed down. First, the growth of manufacturing trade inside the EU has begun to falter, which generally means less pressure on companies to improve their performance. This contributes to a second phenomenon which is that prices across the EU are no longer converging even though price differences between EU Member States far ex ...[+++]ceed those between different regions of the USA. Third, the EU is investing more in the rest of the world than the rest of the world is investing in the EU, a warning perhaps that it is more urgent than ever to reform the EU's general regulatory environment and kick-start its Internal Market once again.

Looking back over these years, I would like to start by recalling our colleague Basil de Ferranti, now sadly deceased, who at that time drafted the first reports on the creation of the internal market and thereby initiated this whole development.

The fact that the number of passengers has now dropped dramatically should not be a reason for supporting airline companies by granting even more tax money, but rather a reason for investing in the improvement of other forms of intra-European passenger transport.

Completion of the internal market will give the European economy a boost which will benefit our partners as well as ourselves.

Speaking about the first internal market week, which was held in Belgium from 16 May until 3 June, Mr Vanni d'Archirafi commented: "With several hundred participants and several hundred telephone calls, not to mention the large volume of post received, I believe that this first venture was truly successful.

While EDC's involvement in domestic insurance has given the smallest exporters some assistance, on the middle- and large-sized exporters this new domestic credit policy has managed to kick the collective groins of the credit insurers and factorers along the way.