§ Mr. Lyellasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will list the principal remaining barriers to trade within the European Economic Community and give an estimate of their cost.
§ Mr. ChannonI refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Mr. Batiste) on 11 April at column229.
As to the cost of non-tariff barriers to trade as a whole within the European Community, there are a number of published estimates, though these have concentrated mainly on the costs incurred at border crossings. In particular, I refer my hon. Friend to the following publications which are available from the Library:
- —European Commission Communication on the State of the Internal Market (COM(81)315)—June 1981.
- —House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities, Session 1981–82, 17th Report—Internal Market—July 1982.
- —"Towards European Economic Recovery in the 1980s"
- —Report presented to the European Parliament by Mr. M. Albert and Professor R. J. Ball—July 1983.
A more recent Commission estimate has put the cost to the Community as a whole, of waiting time for freight traffic at intra-Community frontiers, at £500 million.