The LSE blogs have a fascinating article about the EU as a means of intra-market trade liberalisation (HERE) and concludes that it is far freer and more liberal than the USA, Canada or Australia which all still have significant interstate barriers to trade. In fact Canada is following Australia in copying the EU to open up trade between provinces and states. This is all new to me. I assumed that both Canada and Australia already had country wide rules just like we have, but apparently not.
And listen to this:
"If Australia and Canada have now both recognized that their legal principles long permitted “far too many unnecessary regulatory and legislative differences…that prevent the free flow of people, goods, services and investments between provinces/territories” (as the Canadian Senate’s report put it), that recognition has not actually altered their legal standards for openness. Their internal liberalization has been entirely voluntary on the part of the states—using what the EU would call “intergovernmental” mechanisms—thus confirming the states’ authority to back off from openness if they wish.
"Indeed, the Canadian Supreme Court reconfirmed this principle in the widely-followed “Free the Beer” case decided in April 2018. It held that New Brunswick’s limit on buying beer from other provinces was acceptable despite the constitution’s provision that any province’s goods “be admitted free into each of the other provinces” (section 121). As one lawyer said after the decision, “[Internal liberalization] is going to have to be negotiated by the provinces rather than decreed by the Supreme Court.”
The blog post argues that Brexiteers don't understand or appreciate the extent to which the legal order in the EU has led to the most open single market in the world. All the common rules and regulations that they rail against are precisely what has given us the single market and the customs union and what makes Brexit even more illogical and damaging.
