ec: The price of shoddy practice.

The single market will only work if the EC is stricter with its backsliders.

At midnight on 31 December - or so we were once confidently assured - the European Single Market will transform the business landscape. Even the storm over Maastricht and the disintegration of the exchange rate mechanism (ERM) were not supposed to halt, or even seriously slow down, the wholesale elimination of trade barriers. The promised vista was of a level playing field stretching from Bantry Bay to the Aegean. But now we are actually on the eve of 1993 doubts are starting to accumulate like thunderclouds.