Enterprise and Integration : Big Business and the Making of the Single European Market

In this innovative approach to the history of European integration, Grace Ballor reconstructs the making of the Single European Market through multinationals. She shows how policymakers designed the market for big business and how firms adapted their strategies to the realities of market integration, with implications for economies and societies.

In post-Brexit Europe, it has never been more important to understand who benefits from the European Union and its Single Market. In this innovative approach to the history of European integration, Grace Ballor reconstructs the creation of the Single Market in the 1980s and 1990s through the lens of multinational business. She both shows how policymakers viewed big business as an ally in market integration and uncovers the diverse responses of European companies, ranging from enthusiastic support for the market to opposition to its attendant social and environmental policies. Drawing on institutional and corporate archives and interviews with key policymakers and business leaders, Ballor demonstrates how businesses adapted their strategies to the new realities of integration and how these adaptations in turn shaped international markets. This is essential reading for anyone wishing to make sense of contemporary European economics and the complex relationships between business and policymaking, economy and society.