EU/Responsibilities: The single market, with all of its talk of removing tariffs and trade restrictions, will always find it hard to catch the imagination of the average European Union consumer, writes Una McCaffrey
Yet successful management of the free movement of people, goods, services and money around the now 25-member EU is one of the fundamentals on which the success of the Union will always be based.
Without a workable internal market, there is no workable EU, particularly as the Union expands.
In simple terms, the portfolio that was yesterday awarded to Mr McCreevy is concerned with sweeping away any barriers that stand in the way of people, businesses and, most significantly, money, moving freely around the EU.
The benefits of such free movement should, in theory at least, lead to more competitive commercial markets and a greater cross-pollination of the EU's intellectual capital, its 450 million people.
As well as moving freely, these citizens should also be able to access goods and services from anywhere else in the EU without facing unreasonable additional costs. Businesses, on the other side of the equation, should be able to gain unrestricted access to markets in all 25 EU countries.
Progress has indeed been made, with the old "fragmented" market slowly being eased out of action in many sectors. The European Commission estimates, for example, that the single market has created no fewer than 2.5 million new jobs since its creation in 1993 under Mr Jacques Delors, as well as €1,000 billion in "extra" wealth.
So far, so impressive. But even the idealistic Commission acknowledges "the undeniable successes of the single market must not blind us to its shortcomings".
The internal markets for services such as water, rail and travel are, for example, more restricted than those for goods such as clothes or computers.
This is where Mr McCreevy comes in, with the job of achieving a successful internal market for EU citizens and businesses still very much a work in progress.
And until it becomes possible for a Dublin resident to buy his pension in Frankfurt or for a water contractor in Omagh to easily bid for a public works contract in Gstaad, this will remain the case. Indeed, a recent study shows the difference between applying or not applying EU public procurement rules can be as high as 34 per cent of total costs.
Until now, one of the hardy perennials that dominated discussions on the internal market was tax, both on businesses and consumers.
The EU has historically broken into two clear camps on the issue: those countries (such as Germany) that believe tax rates should be harmonised across the Union, and those (such as the Republic and the UK) that utterly oppose the very idea.
Those for the move see it as essential to the creation of a true single market, while those against it fear the loss of existing national advantages in the area.
Mr McCreevy, who has always been firmly and vocally in the latter camp, will not, however, be directly troubled by the matter in his new job, as the business of tax has been placed in the hands of another Commissioner.
However, it would still be too simplistic to say that Mr McCreevy will proceed without reference to the tax bugbear.
His most pressing duty when he moves to Brussels will be to move ahead with the Commission's plan to free up the EU market for financial services.
This plan foresees the creation of a single capital market, with one set of financial rules by 2005. The basic idea is to allow consumers and businesses to use any financial provider in the European Union that they choose.
One pillar of this will be the controversial savings directive, which will allow interest on savings received in, for example, France by an Irish person, to be liable to Irish, rather than French, savings tax.
This will be achieved in part through direct exchange of information between the various EU tax authorities, thus bringing tax firmly into the operation of the internal market.