The crisis has exposed acute new questions, such as how to marry Europe's cross-border single market for finance with the reality that only national governments can and will step in when things go wrong.
It also beat its peers in derivatives exposures, trading assets, cross-border risk, liquidity and market risk.
In February, an ECJ advocate general said this was in line with the aims of the EU single market - a border-free zone for goods and services.
Rent-controlled flats in New York or Santa Monica are available only to those with connections, creating corruption in the housing market and a border tax on newcomers who must pay higher rents.
She comes from a border state that shares a media market with Philadelphia.
But others are opening up the legal services market south of the border.
In a global market, cross-border partnerships can alter the scene, and create entirely new brand names, in very unexpected ways.
In Frankfurt, five Algerian men are on trial, four of them accused of plotting to cause an explosion at the Christmas market in the French border city of Strasbourg in December 2000.
The free flow of goods and a common currency are one thing, but if companies have to deal with 15 different takeover codes when making cross-border acquisitions, a true single market is still an illusion.
Anaheim, whose natural market stretches from Santa Barbara all the way down to the northern border of San Diego, may soon stand as a better market altogether.
Now Chinese wages are rising sharply, and Mexico's market share north of the border is growing again.
While Goya is the strongest brand along the Eastern seaboard, it has challengers in American West, where Mexican companies have moved north of the border for a piece of the American market.
FORBES: How Goya Became One Of America's Fastest-Growing Food Companies
Thailand's economy is still recovering from its 1997 bust, but the border casinos are a sure sign that the black market never stopped booming.
Spain's second-largest bank, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), in September acquired Laredo National Bancshares, which has a 23% market share in the Texas-Mexico border area.
Lehman Brothers puts current cross-border equity investment flows at 1.6% of world market capitalization, a 20-year high.
Even the stall owners are Chinese, and the market starts winding down at 3pm, because the border closes at 4pm.
But such limits might be hard to square with the principles of the European single market, which is meant to encourage cross-border competition.
Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people ) puts current cross-border equity investment flows at 1.6% of world market capitalization, a 20-year high.
He said a single UK integrated energy market, where Scottish consumers and citizens south of the border continued to pay for the incentivisation of renewables technology, would "undoubtedly happen post independence".
Belarus's open border with Russia makes it an easy route for foreign firms into that burgeoning market.
The EU and the single market were crucial for British jobs and helped the UK tackle cross border crime, he added.
More cross-border competition, and more reliable consumer protection, would do wonders to integrate the market.
To cap it all, conservative ideas of deregulation and unfettered free-market capitalism have been brought into disrepute by the financial turmoil south of the border.
Turkish police displayed evidence this week of what they say is the growing black-market trade of weapons of U.S. origin being smuggled across the border from neighboring Iraq.
EU's most Westphalian features are also its most vital ones: the commissioners who try to keep the internal market operating freely, and who try to unscramble cartels and allow cross-border mergers.
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