OIM’s UK Internal Market Report: First Impressions

By: Rachel Merelie (Competition and Markets Authority)

The Office for the Internal Market (OIM), part of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), recently published its first report, giving an overview of the UK Internal Market.

The UK Internal Market looks at how trade flows between the UK nations, and how it shapes an important part of the 4 nations’ economies.

Cross-border activity within the UK hasn’t been reviewed in this way before so our report is a first step towards improving our understanding of trade within the UK’s internal market. It also explores regulatory environments that shape the market and identifies areas where new regulatory divergence between the 4 nations might be most likely to arise.

The OIM

The Office for the Internal Market (OIM) was launched in September 2021.

Our mission is to help trade flow freely within the UK internal market, allowing people and businesses to trade across the UK without additional barriers based on which nation they are in.

We do this by providing independent technical and economic advice to the four governments of the UK on how laws, rules and regulations could affect the UK Internal Market. We will also report every year on how well the market is working, collaborating with statisticians and economists from around the UK…

CONTINUE READING…