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News article24 January 20201 min read

The economic potential of barriers reduction in the EU Single Market

Rhomolo
© European Commission

A recently published JRC analysis carried out in collaboration with DG GROW provides a quantitative assessment of the impact of reducing barriers in regulated business services sectors and construction.

The 2019 Single Market performance

In December 2019, and in the context of the European Semester, the European Commission published a report on the performance of the Single Market in 2019. The report argues that there is scope for improvements within the Single Market by tackling excessive regulations and insufficient investments and infrastructures.

The model results

An analysis carried out with the spatial dynamic general equilibrium model RHOMOLO suggests that reducing the regulatory restrictiveness in legal, accounting, architectural and engineering services may increase EU value added by up to €41 billion and generate jobs for 500,000 persons, after ten years.

A simulation dealing with an improvement in labour productivity in the construction sector assumed to stem from a reduction of the existing barriers in that sector suggests that up to 119,000 jobs could be created after 10 years, with an increase of EU value added of about €39 billion.

Further information:

Details

Publication date
24 January 2020