The SEA . . . Key facts<\/strong><\/h2>\nThe SEA was a fundamental stage in the EU\u2019s development for several reasons. The SEA effectively sought to prepare Europe for a new round of integration to be completed by the early 1990s and, in doing so, revived European integration after a period of \u2018Euro-sclerosis\u2019 or \u2018Euro-stagnation\u2019 throughout the 1970\u2019s and 80\u2019s.<\/p>\n
The idea of the SEA was to highlight and develop the means for Europe to complete its internal market. The SEA was designed so as to turn the EEC from a common market to a\u00a0single market<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n- Common market<\/strong>\u00a0means there are few or no barriers to trade and commerce between national markets.<\/li>\n
- Single market<\/strong>\u00a0means there is one big EU-wide market with zero barriers of any kind.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
It achieved this largely by creating the necessary decision making structures (such as increasing qualified majority voting and reducing voting under unanimity) that allowed progress towards complete market unification to be made and ensured that continuing management of the single market could be carried out once unification had been completed.<\/p>\n
In a nutshell, the SEA paved the way and created the conditions for the creation of the European Union in 1993.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Europe of the late 1970\u2019s and early to mid 1980\u2019s was plagued by \u2018Euro-sclerosis\u2019. This was a term used to refer to the high unemployment and economic stagnation that Europe experienced at the time, particularly when compared with the United States and Japan. The Single European Act, signed in 1986 and\u00a0entered into force on<\/p>\n
Read More<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":399,"menu_order":84,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-589","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Single European Act (SEA) (1987) - European Studies Hub<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hum.port.ac.uk\/europeanstudieshub\/learning\/module-5-history-of-the-european-union\/the-single-european-act-sea\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Single European Act (SEA) (1987) - European Studies Hub\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Europe of the late 1970\u2019s and early to mid 1980\u2019s was plagued by \u2018Euro-sclerosis\u2019. 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<\/a><\/p>\n