The fourth edition of the Research Conference on the EU Single Market organised by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs. This edition follows the successful events held in December 2022, February 2024 and April 2025

. The conference will be held in person in Brussels on 19 March 2026.

The conference will bring together leading researchers to present their findings and share policy insights on the EU single market. This edition will focus on the interplay between the single market and industrial policy, inviting contributions in this area. While most of the topics are inherently linked to economic analysis, the aim is to foster a comprehensive and multidisciplinary perspective.

The range of research topics includes (but is not limited to)

• deepening the integration of the single market
  • challenges and opportunities to single market integration
  • single market as platform to strengthen competitiveness and/ or resilience
  • long-term trends in integration: goods, services, labour and capital
  • deepening the single market in sectors such as energy, telecommunications, financial markets, defence
  • issues related to market-size and fragmentation, including global comparisons
  • the external dimension of the single market, including economic security, supply chains and their reallocation, dependencies and vulnerabilities, enlargement
  • quantification of potential of further single market integration, including in services
• interplay between industrial policy and the single market
  • strategic positioning and diversification into emerging sectors and critical technologies – economic enablers, constraints and potential of deeper integration
  • cross-border spillovers in innovation, investment, productivity
  • reinforcing and transforming the EU’s existing industrial comparative advantages, including through the lens of economic complexity
• design of industrial policy in a fast-changing context
  • systemic objectives and potential trade-offs: innovation, economic security, industrial transformation, climate and inclusive growth
  • strategic policy design in the face of uncertainty: dynamic capabilities, mission-oriented policies, adaptive governance, institutional settings
  • reconciling openness with sectoral interventions, including evolving EU competition and trade policies
  • role of public inputs and common goods as a source of transformation and competitiveness
  • comparative analyses of industrial policies around the world and the EU’s responses
• national and regional industrial policies within the single market
  • national and regional industrial policy in an integrated economy: goals, instruments and constraints
  • European value chains and the role of regional capacities and specialisation
  • place-based economic benefits of industrial policy, including local development and socio-economic cohesion in the single market
  • common instruments vs national approaches: coordination mechanisms and institutional constraints
  • metrics for cross-country evaluation of industrial policy
  • data infrastructure and methodological challenges in evaluating industrial policy

Authors interested in presenting their research should submit their papers to GROW-SM-CONFERENCE@ec.europa.eu.