The Single Market in Financial Services (SMFS) represents the European Community's attempt to forge a Europe-wide market for financial services. The SMFS was born in the landmark 1985 White Paper, which identified all the remaining barriers to a fully integrated European market and proposed measures for removing these barriers by the end of 1992. Given the projections that liberalization of the sector could account for fully one-third of the economic benefits of a single market, financial services was given a place of honor in the forefront of the White Paper's proposals. Greater moves towards full economic and monetary union (EMU) also gave an added urgency for financial markets reform. In fact, EMU and the single market in financial services grew to have a symbiotic relationship: the single market could not be maximized without EMU, and EMU would not be feasible without unified, Europe-wide capital and financial markets.
