On 18 September 2026, the Robert Schuman Centre’s Economic and Monetary Union Laboratory (EMU Lab) hosted Enrico Letta, President of the Jacques Delors Institute and former Prime Minister of Italy, for a lecture on The road to one Europe, one market.
Drawing on his 2024 report, Much More Than a Market, Letta focused on the challenge of turning the idea of a European single market into a reality in citizens’ and businesses’ daily lives. He argued that Europe’s main weakness is not simply its economic size, but the fragmentation of its markets, which prevents European countries from benefiting fully from their collective scale.
Letta highlighted the One Europe, One Market roadmap, which includes 42 measures and deadlines agreed by the European Commission, Parliament and Council. He stressed that deadlines are essential to turn political proposals into concrete action: “Policies without deadlines are academic debates.”
A central theme of the lecture was the relationship between scale, competitiveness and sovereignty. In areas such as financial services, energy and connectivity, national fragmentation limits Europe’s ability to compete with larger global economies and can create strategic dependencies. Letta argued that European integration is therefore increasingly linked not only to economic performance, but also to security and resilience.
He also stressed that greater European scale should not come at the expense of Europe’s diversity. Instead, the single market should enable European ‘champions’ to operate at global scale while allowing smaller countries and businesses to benefit from a larger market. “The soul of Europe is this fantastic mix between small and big,” he said.
Letta concluded by calling for greater confidence in Europe’s ability to act collectively: “We are Europeans. We have to be closer to the Europeans.”
The full lecture is also available here.
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The Economic and Monetary Union Laboratory (EMU Lab) is a collaborative initiative driven by the Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa Chair and the Pierre Werner Chair, aiming to reassess the Economic and Monetary Union's structure in light of current European and global economic conditions.