The internal market chapters

If the fundamentals cluster is the one that gates the process, the internal market cluster is the one a company actually feels. It covers what may be sold, by whom, across which border, and with what paperwork.

Free movement of goods

Common technical requirements, conformity assessment and market surveillance. A product meeting the harmonised standard is sold everywhere without further approval; a country must build the laboratories, notified bodies and surveillance authorities that make that credible.

Services and establishment

The right of a company to provide a service across a border or to set up in another member state, and mutual recognition of professional qualifications so that an engineer or an architect is not required to requalify.

This chapter is quietly among the most consequential, because services are a larger share of most economies than goods.

Capital and company law

Removing restrictions on cross-border investment and payments, and aligning company law: disclosure, accounts, audit, shareholder rights and beneficial ownership registers.

The accounting and audit part is what makes a Ukrainian company legible to a foreign investor, and it does that regardless of accession.

Consumer protection and intellectual property

Product liability, guarantees, distance selling rules, and enforcement of trademarks, patents and geographical indications. The last of those matters more than it sounds, because it protects producers of named local products.

What a business should do about it

Treat this cluster as a work programme rather than a negotiation. Almost all of it is worth doing before it is required, and the firms that started early are the ones already exporting.

This is the cluster a business notices, because it changes directly what it may sell and where. The preparation my own company will do sits here: putting product files in order against the free movement rules, and reading company law and consumer legislation now. When these four chapters open, the difference between the prepared and the unprepared will show up within a season.