The EU and UK Government

The European Union is a political and economic union of European states. Its aims were set out over six decades of treaties, and section 4.3 asks you to know those aims and judge how far they were achieved. It does not ask you to describe the EU's institutions or how it takes decisions.

The founding purpose was security, not commerce. Robert Schuman's declaration of May 1950 proposed pooling French and German coal and steel production so that war between them would become, in his phrase, materially impossible. Economic integration was the method; peace was the goal.

Treaty	Year signed	Aim it advanced
Treaty of Rome	1957	Created the European Economic Community and committed members to "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe"
Single European Act	1986	Set a target of completing a single internal market by the end of 1992
Maastricht Treaty	1992	Created the European Union itself, EU citizenship, and a timetable for economic and monetary union
Lisbon Treaty	2007	Streamlined decision-making across a much enlarged union and extended majority voting

Four aims run through all of them:

• Peace and reconciliation between states that had fought two continental wars in thirty years.
• Ever-closer union — an open-ended commitment to deepening integration over time.
• A single market in which the four freedoms operate across national borders.
• Political and economic union — a shared currency, shared citizenship and common action in areas beyond trade.

The UK joined the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973 and confirmed membership in the referendum of 5 June 1975, in which 67.2% voted to stay on a turnout of 64.5%. It left the EU on 31 January 2020, leaving 27 member states.

The four freedoms are the legal core of the single market and are named directly in the specification. Learn what each one covers and one concrete consequence of it.

Freedom	What it means	Consequence for the UK while a member
Goods	Products lawfully sold in one member state can be sold in another, with no internal tariffs and a common external tariff	UK manufacturers exported into the bloc without customs declarations or rules-of-origin paperwork
Services	A firm can supply services across a border, or establish itself in another member state on equal terms	UK financial firms used "passporting" rights to sell services across the bloc from London
Capital	Money, investment and credit can move freely between member states	Cross-border investment into and out of the UK faced no exchange controls or discriminatory restrictions
People	Citizens can live, work and study in any member state, with equal treatment in employment	EU nationals could take UK jobs without a visa, and UK nationals could do the same across the bloc

The four freedoms are treated as a package. A state that wants full access to the single market for its goods is expected to accept free movement of people as well — which is precisely why the referendum debate about immigration and the debate about market access could not be separated.

A worked distinction students routinely get wrong. Free movement of people under EU law was not an unconditional right to migrate. It was a right to move to work, study, be self-sufficient or seek work for a limited period, with equal treatment once exercising it. That legal nuance mattered very little politically, because the practical effect was open labour markets between member states — and it is the political effect the specification asks you to evaluate.

The specification asks specifically about the extent to which the aims were achieved. The four freedoms were not achieved equally, and a strong answer ranks them.

Goods and capital — largely achieved

Internal tariffs were abolished, a common external tariff applied to imports from outside, and product standards were harmonised so that a single approval covered the whole market. Capital controls between member states were removed, and cross-border investment moved without discriminatory obstacles. Both freedoms functioned close to their design.

Services — the least complete

Services account for roughly three-quarters of the EU's economic output but a far smaller share of trade between member states. Professional qualifications, licensing rules and national regulators continued to fragment the market, and the Services Directive agreed in 2006 was substantially diluted before adoption. Even at its most integrated, the single market in services fell well short of the single market in goods.

People — legally achieved, politically the most contested

The freedom worked as designed in law, and became the sharpest political issue in the UK. When ten states joined in May 2004, most existing members imposed transitional restrictions on workers from the eight central and eastern European accession countries. The UK, Ireland and Sweden opened their labour markets immediately.

Research commissioned by the Home Office before enlargement had estimated net migration from the new member states at roughly 5,000 to 13,000 a year. Actual arrivals ran far above that range. The projection failed largely because it assumed most other member states would open at the same time, which they did not.

Why this matters for the exam. It gives you a precise, dated worked example of a founding aim being achieved technically while generating the political backlash that ended UK membership. Free movement did what the treaties intended. The unpredicted concentration of that movement in three countries turned a functioning freedom into a domestic political crisis.

Beyond the single market, the treaties committed members to deeper political and economic union. Progress here was real but uneven, and the UK stood outside the two largest projects.

Economic union — substantial but incomplete. The euro launched as an accounting currency in 1999, with notes and coins in 2002. Nineteen member states used it when the UK left in January 2020. Monetary union was achieved; fiscal union was not. Member states kept control of tax and spending, so the eurozone had one interest rate and nineteen budgets. The debt crisis that began around 2010, most severely in Greece, exposed exactly that gap, and the response required emergency mechanisms that the founding treaties had not provided.

Political union — advanced, then stalled. Maastricht created EU citizenship and extended cooperation into foreign policy and justice. Successive treaties widened qualified majority voting, reducing the number of areas where a single state could veto. But union stopped well short of statehood: there is no EU army, no EU power to levy taxes on citizens, and unanimity is still required for treaty change, for taxation and for the most sensitive foreign-policy decisions.

Three moments mark the ceiling:

1. The UK's opt-outs. The UK secured an opt-out from the single currency at Maastricht in 1992 and stayed outside the Schengen passport-free travel area. Integration was therefore uneven across member states from the 1990s onwards, which weakens any claim that ever-closer union was a single, uniform path.
2. The rejected constitution. A draft Constitutional Treaty was defeated in referendums in France on 29 May 2005 and in the Netherlands on 1 June 2005. Its substance largely returned in the Lisbon Treaty, but the political signal was unmistakable: electorates would not endorse a constitution for the union.
3. Withdrawal. On 23 June 2016 the UK voted to leave by 51.9% to 48.1% on a turnout of 72.2%. Ever-closer union had been treated as a one-way process; a member state reversing it showed that it was not.

A sharp evaluative line: the EU achieved most of what it set out to do in markets and least of what it set out to do in politics. The four freedoms are largely in place across 27 states; the political union that was supposed to follow from them stalled well short of its stated destination.

Section 4.3's second bullet is narrow and precise: the impact of leaving on UK parliamentary sovereignty in relation to policy making. That means the legal mechanics, not the negotiations.

Stage	Date	Effect
Referendum	23 June 2016	Advisory in law, decisive in politics: 51.9% Leave on 72.2% turnout
Miller ruling	24 January 2017	The Supreme Court held that ministers could not use prerogative powers to start withdrawal
Notification of Withdrawal Act	March 2017	Parliament authorised notice, given on 29 March 2017
EU (Withdrawal) Act 2018	June 2018	Converted the existing body of EU law into domestic "retained EU law" so there would be no legal vacuum
Withdrawal	31 January 2020	The UK ceased to be a member state; a transition period ran to 31 December 2020
Retained EU Law Act 2023	June 2023	Ended the supremacy of retained EU law from the end of 2023, renamed it "assimilated law", and gave ministers powers to revoke or reform it

(Extra context — the European Communities Act 1972, which gave EU law effect in the UK and was repealed on exit day, was removed from Component 2 section 1 of this specification and is not assessable content. It is included here only because the repeal is the mechanism by which withdrawal changed the UK's legal order.)

The constitutional point is contained in that final row. Assimilated law now sits in the ordinary hierarchy of UK law. Parliament can amend or repeal any part of it by ordinary statute, with no special procedure and no external court able to disapply the result. That is parliamentary sovereignty operating exactly as A. V. Dicey described it.

This is the shape a 30-mark essay on section 4.3 takes, and it has a genuinely balanced answer.

The devolution dimension. Pearson's guidance states that students need the impact of withdrawal on the relationship between Westminster and the devolved administrations, so this belongs in your answer. Powers returning from Brussels in agriculture, fisheries and environmental standards fell inside devolved competence. Westminster passed the UK Internal Market Act 2020 to keep trade flowing across the four nations by requiring each to recognise the others' standards. The Scottish Parliament and the Senedd both refused legislative consent, and Westminster legislated anyway. It could do so because the Supreme Court had confirmed in Miller (2017) that the Sewel Convention, however politically weighty, cannot be enforced by a court.

Reaching a judgement. The defensible conclusion is that withdrawal restored legal sovereignty in full while redistributing political power in three directions at once: some to Parliament, a great deal to ministers through delegated powers, and a new source of tension to the devolved institutions. An answer that treats "took back control" as either simply true or simply false has missed the interesting part.

1. Writing the essay this specification stopped asking for

Section 4.3 is deliberately narrow. Assessable content is the aims of the EU, the four freedoms, political and economic union, how far these were achieved, and the impact of leaving on parliamentary sovereignty. EU institutions, EU decision-making, individual EU policies and the withdrawal negotiations are outside it. Pearson's own guidance states that the EU now plays a reduced role in this qualification. Pages of detail on how the EU makes law are not what this section assesses.

2. Treating the four freedoms as equally achieved

Rank them. Goods and capital went furthest, services least far, and people worked as designed while generating the politics that ended UK membership. That ranking is the analysis the question wants.

3. Confusing the EU with the European Convention on Human Rights

They are separate bodies with separate courts. The UK left the EU in January 2020 and remains a party to the Convention, which the Human Rights Act 1998 gives effect to domestically. Muddling them undermines every point you make about sovereignty or rights.

4. Assuming sovereignty was lost and then simply regained

The stronger argument is that legal sovereignty was retained throughout membership — proved by the fact that Parliament could and did legislate to leave — while political sovereignty was pooled. Say which of the two you are talking about each time you use the word.

5. Forgetting the devolution consequences

Returning powers over farming, fishing and the environment landed in devolved competence, and the UK Internal Market Act 2020 passed without the consent of the Scottish Parliament or the Senedd. Pearson's guidance names this relationship explicitly, so it is examinable content rather than background.

6. Using undated claims about the EU

The EU has 27 member states; it had 28 while the UK was a member. Nineteen states used the euro at the point of UK withdrawal in January 2020, and the number has changed since. Attach a date to any figure that moves.

7. Answering without a judgement

Evaluate carries 10 of its 30 marks for AO3. Decide how far the aims were achieved, or how far sovereignty was restored, and defend the line you have taken rather than leaving both sides on the page.