Economic freedoms, no less than other liberties, are eternally vulnerable, and never more so than when governments are weak or prone to populism. The "four freedoms" underpinning the European integration project - the free movement of goods, services, labour and capital - are no different.

In the aftermath of the rejection of the European Union constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands in mid-2005, the Union's single market appeared to be at risk if member states interpreted the votes as a rejection of liberalisation. The failure of many member governments to implement reforms and recent efforts by three governments to prevent foreign takeovers have added to concerns that the half-century of (unsteady) progress towards European market integration is going into reverse.