Internal Market - Free Movement of Capital

Free Movement of Capital

Free movement of capital is intended to permit movement of investments such as property purchases and buying of shares between countries. Until the drive towards Economic and Monetary Union the development of the capital provisions had been slow. Post-Maastricht there has been a rapidly developing corpus of ECJ judgements regarding this initially neglected freedom. The free movement of capital is unique in that it is a goal of the EU to pursue a liberal capital regime with third countries.

Capital within the EU may be transferred in any amount from one country to another. All intra-EU transfers in euro are considered as domestic payments and bear the corresponding domestic transfer costs. This includes all member States of the EU, even those outside the eurozone providing the transactions are carried out in euro. Credit/debit card charging and ATM withdrawals within the Eurozone are also charged as domestic, however paper-based payment orders, like cheques, have not been standardised so these are still domestic-based. The ECB has also set up a clearing system, TARGET, for large euro transactions.