According to a study, the EU's industrial powerhouses, metropolitan areas and Germany are the biggest beneficiaries of the EU's single market system. This study highlights the economic and social inequalities that plague the EU.
The purpose of forming a single market is to ensure the free flow of goods, capital, services and labour among the 28 EU countries.
According to a report by the Bertelsmann Foundation, Germany, Europe's largest economy, is the largest beneficiary of the single market system in absolute terms, earning an additional 86 billion euros ($96 billion) a year from the single market.
The study found that the average German earned Euro 1,046 for a single market, while the average European Union earned Euro 840.
"The benefits of a single market are unequal, but everyone does benefit from it," says Aart De Geus, chairman of the Bodman Foundation.
The EU's single market system, implemented in 1992, aims to remove all tariff and regulatory barriers between member countries and enable European enterprises to have a larger local market, comparable to the market size of the United States and Japan.
However, since the financial crisis in 2007, while Germany's economy has continued to grow strongly, some member countries, especially southern European countries, have suffered from low economic growth rate and high unemployment rate, which has enabled far-left and far-right political parties to gain popular support. Economic and social inequalities also led to Britain's decision to withdraw from the EU in a 2016 referendum.
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