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This paper discuses how developing a transport policy for a set of economically related but essentially independent states poses a particular set of questions. At one level there is the issue of whether the European Union (EU) area represents anything like a natural economic market for transport services while at the other level are the problems of overcoming national priorities and legacies. Nevertheless, for an economic union to be fully effective and for trade between members to be conducted efficiently there is the need for at least a reasonable degree of coordination of transport policies. The underlying economic of a common market were recognized at the outset; the problem has been one of moving from a set of fairly well-established broad economic concepts to a tractable policy position. Consensus needs make this difficult in conditions where from a short-term economic perspective there are pressures in each Member State towards protecting the status qua and, in the longer term, to ensure that distribution gains from freer trade benefit individual members. Further, while there may be general agreement about the need for a common transport policy, and setting aside who gains most from it, there are genuine ideological differences on how to attain particular objectives. The EU has taken its time to tackle the transport needs of a genuine common market. However, what has emerged, while open to a variety of technical criticisms, is something approaching a free market for transport services within the Union - a market that approximates long-established economic ideas of workable competition and from whose experiences other parts of the world may learn.
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