Walk into any supermarket in Europe and everything feels simple. The shelves are full, the choice is wide, and brands from across the continent sit side by side without anyone thinking twice about it. Italian pasta, Belgian chocolate, German shampoo — it all just works. But that normality hides something far more complex: a system that connects thousands of producers, manufacturers and retailers across borders every single day.
This is one of the clearest successes of the European Single Market. Around €276 billion worth of consumer goods move within the EU each year, quietly ensuring that consumers have access to what they need, when they need it. It is a system built on coordination, flexibility, and constant adaptation, and it is precisely that complexity that allows it to function so reliably.
Yet today, this system is increasingly being questioned. The debate around “territorial supply constraints” starts from a seemingly simple concern: why do prices differ between countries? It is an understandable question, but it risks leading to overly simple conclusions. Price differences are not unusual in a market as diverse as Europe, no matter what goods are being sold. They reflect variations in taxes, labour costs, logistics, consumer demand, and local competition. They reflect local market dynamics, consumer purchasing power, and consumer preferences. Most importantly, they reflect the choices of retailers, who ultimately decide what consumers pay for every product on their shelves, whether their own-label or competing products.1
This is matters because it challenges a key assumption in the current discussion — that changing how products are supplied will automatically lead to lower prices for consumers. Retailers, including Aldi, have acknowledged that products purchased centrally at identical prices across Europe are still sold at very different retail prices depending on national market conditions.2 In practice, one only needs to visit different stores of the same retail chain in the same city to see prices can vary significantly. Acting on the assumption that regulating supply management operations will automatically reduce consumer prices risks fundamentally misdiagnosing the issue.
At the same time, what is often described as a “constraint” is, in many cases, simply how the Single Market operates in practice. Products need to comply with different national rules, languages, packaging requirements, and consumer expectations. Logistics vary, distribution networks differ, and demand is not the same everywhere. These are not artificial barriers; they are the conditions that allow companies to serve different markets effectively.
Trying to remove this complexity without properly assessing it could have unintended consequences. Supply chains are not static; they respond to change. If new rules impact commercial freedom to operate, manufacturers need to reconsider how to organise production and manage supply, adjusting where they sell, or rethinking how they invest. Over time, this will reshape what is produced, where, and by whom, narrowing choice, slowing innovation, and pushing costs up, not down.
And price, in any case, is only part of the picture. If price were the only parameter to consider, then consumer goods would just be sourced from cheaper production sites in third countries, and the third-largest manufacturing sector in Europe would cease to exist. Consumers do not make decisions based on price alone. They care about quality, about availability, about being able to find products they trust, about convenience, and increasingly about supporting local and/or national economies. They care about shorter supply chains that impact the sustainability characteristics of the brand they buy. They care about local farmers and local businesses that provide ingredients or materials into bigger supply chain systems. They purchase reflecting preferences that go beyond simple cost comparisons. A system that delivers variety and reliability, as well as resilience, is already creating value for Europe, beyond its manufacturing footprint.
None of this means that the Single Market cannot be improved. But it does suggest that the focus should be on the right issues. If the goal is to make it easier for goods to move across borders, then addressing regulatory fragmentation — differences in labelling, packaging and national requirements — is a more effective place to start. These are the kinds of barriers that genuinely complicate trade and removing them would strengthen the system without disrupting how it works.
Before introducing new measures, it would be wise to take a step back and look more closely at the evidence. What exactly is the problem, who is affected, and will the proposed solutions actually deliver the intended benefits of lower consumer prices? Or will they raise them? Without clear answers, there is a real risk of intervening in a system that already functions well.
Europe’s supermarket shelves may look ordinary, but they tell an important story. They show how integration works in practice, how complexity can be managed, and how a diverse continent can still operate as a single market. The challenge is not to reshape that system based on assumptions, but to understand it properly and improve it where it truly needs it.
Click here to read Euractiv Op-Ed.
1 See AIM’s input to the European Commission’s Call for Evidence on “Tackling Unjustified Territorial Supply Constraints” (24 April 2026) for a more detailed assessment of the considerations relevant to properly assessing the issue https://aim.be/news/aim-flawed-assumptions-and-lack-of-cost-assessment-in-eu-territorial-supply-constraints-plans-risk-higher-prices-for-consumers
2 French Senate, Committee of Inquiry on Retail Margins (CE Marges grande distribution), hearing of Aldi France, Pascal Hirth, CEO of Aldi France, 26 March 2026 (approx. minute 20): “It is a highly European market. We purchase this product through our international structure at a price that is essentially the same for all countries in the group (aside from transport costs) […] each country then positions itself according to its own competitive environment. For example, for pasta sold at €0.55 in France, the country where it will be sold at the highest price would be Poland, at €0.79, while Germany would be around €0.65. This is because competitive conditions differ across countries.” Rapporteur, confirming: “So, all Aldi stores [across Europe] purchase the product at the same price and then resell it according to their local market”.
