European Multinational Enterprises in the Integration Process

The European integration process has recently become an issue of growing interest and controversy. For some it has been an encouraging example, for others it has been a source of dashed hopes. It is not difficult to find those who think that there is no such thing as the Common Market or, if there is one, that it is not of much consequence. Such a conclusion seems irresistible when we observe Europe’s struggle with agriculture, or its abortive attempts at monetary union, fiscal and legal harmonisation, or an energy policy. Increasingly, however, suspicions of un-Common Market behaviour have been directed at large industrial enterprises, and at governments which seem to be aiding and abetting them through innovation in non-tariff barriers and subsidies to compensate for the lowering of tariffs.1 For example, the effects of governments’ purchasing behaviour have been apparent in acting to restrain trade in areas of interest to large industrial enterprises. Much of the unease, though, seems to have centred on industrial enterprises themselves, and particularly those in highly concentrated sectors. The Third Competition Report of the EEC, for example, points to what appears to be an intriguing and disturbing negative correlation between concentration (the small number of firms in a given industry) and the degree of integration in terms of the effects on intra-EEC trade.2