Do Economic Integrations Improve E-Commerce Performance in Member States? A Study on the European Single Market

Many of the international trade theories hold the view that reducing the barriers to foreign trade will result in an increase in welfare in all the countries that are party to the trade. The regional integrations established in different parts of the world in the period following the Second World War enabled this theory to be translated into practice, at least on a regional basis. The European Single Market, which was founded in 1993, is significantly different from the economic integrations established in the aforementioned period by incorporating many innovations. One of these innovations is that the Digital Single Market strategy pursues to guarantee better access for customers and enterprises to online goods and services across Europe, which was put into effect in 2015. The contribution of economic integrations on e-commerce performance of the member countries has been examined in the context of the European Single Market in this study. In the study, e-commerce statistics of the European Single Market countries covering the years 2010-2021 and the Digital Economy and Society Index covering the years 2017-2022 were used. The data is collected from Eurostat, Benchmarking Digital Europe and European Commission, Digital Scoreboard databases. The results of the study present that the Digital Single Market Strategy has contributed to the less developed countries of the Single Market rather than the developed countries.