A European Supermarket?
The European Union Single Market commissioner has announced plans for a more systematic survey of price differences for similar goods and services across the 27 nations of the internal market. This BBC audio-visual clip from Mark Mardell is an excellent introduction to a teaching lesson on the causes of price divergence within the EU single market. Why is a litre of milk so much more expensive in the UK compared to Belgium. Why is a Nintendo Wii or a top of the range Nokia mobile phone significantly more expensive here than it is in many western European markets?
The EU believes that price convergence will be helped by giving consumers more information and that this transparency of prices might help to curb price discrmination by businesses that supply more than one country in the group of twenty seven nations.
