One of the points made in that structure or that single market is that a company does not have to have an operating base in all 27 EU countries in order to sell in all 27 of them.
Europe's failure to fully capitalize on the opportunities this creates and the persistent lack of sustainable growth in countries like Italy points to deep weaknesses in the structure of many European economies.
If one were to graph the pace of technological breakthroughs and resulting business structure changes and wealth creation throughout history, the graph would include little spikes to include the high points of Mesopotamian agriculture, Egyptian construction, Chinese paper, Athenian education, Roman roads and aqueducts, and so on.