The United Kingdom food industry is among the most dynamic in the European Community. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that it has been relatively well-supplied for some time with specialist periodicals which monitor developments concerning the completion of the Single European Market. In addition, several European Community documents present an outline of the Commission’s strategy for the completion of the internal market in foodstuffs. Leaving aside specialist periodicals, a short-list of the official sources would begin, of course, with the Commission’s well-known 1985 White Paper on “Completing the Internal Market” (COM (85) 310 final). It would also include two further documents. One is the so-called “White Paper bis”, the 1985 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament on “Completion of the internal market: Community legislation on foodstuffs” (COM (85) 603 final). The other is the 1989 Commission “Communication on the free movement of foodstuffs within the Community” (COM (89) 258 final; OJ 24 October 1989, C271/3). These Commission communications are not legally binding, at least in any technical sense, but it is clear from their content that they have definite legal implications. These publications, however, are designed for specific purposes. Almost inevitably they are of limited general utility. Neither official documents nor periodic technical reports give a relatively detailed picture of the potential and likely legal effects of the internal market programme on the food industry as a whole. Until recently, there were few sources in English from which one could piece together a more or less comprehensive description of the implications of the internal market programme for the food industry in general or of the Commission’s actual and proposed legal instruments in the field. This gap has now been filled by the two publications under review.

Fallow’s compilation on The Food Sector is one of a series of guides to particular European Community policies. It assumes no specialist knowledge of European Community law.