Macro Intentions, Micro Realities

The current understanding of Regional Integration is largely macro-economic and political in orientation and has tended to neglect, even ex post, the significance of the Single European Market (SEM) for the spatial restructuring of individual firms. The problem stems largely from a lopsided understanding of Regional Integration. This paper introduces a two-level approach in which integration and its outcomes are studied based on the strategic intent and strategic realities of two types of key actors: governments and core companies. In this contribution it is argued that in advocating the SEM, these actors did not necessarily share the same strategic intent. A new firm-level data set shows also that the expectations of European policymakers did not accurately match actual strategies developed by European core companies.