Harmonisation: an audio-style guide

If I were explaining Harmonisation to a new colleague in Brussels, I would not begin with a definition. I would begin with the scene. This card sits in Ch.9 Internal Market. Its wider background is this: internal market rules remove barriers while preserving legal boundaries and public-interest exceptions. The essential point is simple: Article 114 TFEU — approximation of national laws for the establishment and functioning of the internal market.

The reason this matters is that EU history is rarely a list of isolated facts. It is a chain of choices, compromises and institutional consequences. Here, the useful nuance is: The workhorse legal basis for single-market legislation. That sentence turns the card from a memory test into a piece of political and legal understanding.

A good EU official listens for the structure beneath the story. Who is acting? Which institution has the power? Which treaty, procedure or policy instrument gives the action its force? With an article, do not recite the number mechanically. Hear it as a legal doorway: it tells you who may act, by which procedure, and with what effect. That is also how EPSO distractors are built. They sound familiar, but one institutional detail is out of place.

Use Art. 114 TFEU as your bookmark. Then say the card aloud in one flowing sentence: Harmonisation matters because Article 114 TFEU — approximation of national laws for the establishment and functioning of the internal market. If that sentence sounds natural, you are no longer memorising a flashcard. You are learning to explain the Union as a living system.