Tariffs: What Europe's single market needs?

EU internal barriers add cost, complexity

- PHILIP BLENKINSOP

To bring electronic scrap and other waste from across the European Union to its Belgian recycling plant, materials group Umicore can spend at least a month tackling a complex array of national shipment rules.

The problem is not just Umicore’s, as businesses across Europe grapple with internal obstacles that can be as damaging as tariffs.

Analysts, however, say US President Donald Trump's tariffs have provided the necessary push to make the bloc the single market it aspires to be.

Umicore’s difficulties are particularly significant in that the company recycles 17 of the 34 minerals identified by the EU as critical for its green and digital transition.

Chief Executive Bart Sap says a shipment may need to go by rail in one country, then transfer to a boat in another with a wealth of diverse documentation along the route.

“With that ununified waste market, the internal hurdles are so high that actually 73% of waste is being exported,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Diverging waste shipment regulation is one of the many internal barriers that add cost and complexity to doing business within the EU.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated that EU internal barriers are the equivalent of tariffs of 44% for goods and 110% for services, well above the US tariffs of 25% on steel and cars and 10% on many other goods.

A similar study in 2021 concluded barriers for goods flow within the United States amounted to a 13% tariff.

For goods, EU barriers include restrictions on retailers’ ability to source products or sell them in other EU countries and a jumble of rules on labelling.