Business Interests and the Professions

Business interests and the professions are key components of producer interests. The extent to which some branches of the professions are engaged in economic activity – accountants, architects, dentists, lawyers, engineers etc. – makes analytical consideration possible in one chapter alongside business interests, albeit in a different section. While the professions are diversely constituted, even where most members of a particular profession perform their activities in the public sector, there is a mixed model of private and public sector contracting, and as private operatives. The first phase of the EU was driven by a search for economic prosperity and global competitiveness. Creating one single Europe-wide home market and replacing protected national markets with open borders has been based, inter alia, on enhancing competition and the capability of European business to compete in the global economy of the twenty-first century, and reducing transaction costs of market exchange.