Reassessing the Impact of the Single Market and Its Ability to Help Build Strategic Autonomy

European integration, which culminated in the completion of the Single Market, the single currency and successive enlargements, is now faced with the question of strategic autonomy. Against this backdrop, the present paper has three objectives. First, it assesses the benefits of EU membership based on new, disaggregated trade and production data and using established and cutting-edge empirical methods. Second, it evaluates the costs of strategic autonomy – implying not trading with “riskier” partners. Third, it asks whether further deepening of the Single Market can alleviate these costs. The paper shows that the gains from European integration are substantial, albeit heterogeneous across Member States and sectors, and that the cost of strategic autonomy can be offset by deeper, but comparatively more modest, integration efforts within the European Single Market.