Mario Monti seems naturally suited to be president of the prestigious Bocconi University in Milan, the institution where he first earned a degree in economics and management, and where he later became a rector. He is, to all appearances, a classic academic, with his soft-spoken, professorial manner.

But he also has a keen political eye and a steely toughness: from 1995 to 2005, Monti held two of the most influential positions in European policy-making, firstly as a highly regarded EU Single Market Commissioner, and then as an equally respected Competition Commissioner. And today, though he is far from the Brussels bubble, Monti is keen to deliver a stiff political message to European leaders about their unfinished business when it comes to his old portfolio, the Single Market. “The single market has never been as unpopular in Europe as it is now,” he says. “At the same time, it has never been so necessary. That is why it requires a huge political investment from the European institutions and from national leadership.”

As the European Union struggles to emerge from the economic downturn, it needs a new engine for growth, Monti says. And, he adds, it needs to complete single market to redress many of the imbalances across the European economy that have exacerbated the current Eurozone crisis. Although the original Single Market programme was initiated in the 1980s, it is still a work in progress. “I am disappointed,” he says. “This requires political focus, energy and financing. But also more direct involvement in solving local political problems.”

Last year Monti wrote a report that called on the EU to do more to protect its single market, underlining that the free movement of people, goods, services and capital are the cornerstone of EU prosperity. The report urged EU countries to make concessions on transport, energy, tax policy, social services, workers' rights and industrial policy to strengthen Europe’s internal market of 500 million people.

Since then, the European Commission has been consulting the other EU institutions on the basis of the report, but Monti says it needs a further high-level political push. “The Eurozone crisis has no doubt distracted from this. But people are clearer in their minds that if we want to have a higher sustainable growth rate these days, we need a more deeply integrated single market in Europe higher competitiveness and productivity. If you act on the single market, you get not only a more integrated Europe but a faster growing Europe.”

When it comes to transport, Monti says the failure to complete the single market also represent more than a symbolic setback. “Transport of goods and people are really the hard core of the single market,” he said. “And this is the paradox: 25 years on we are still talking about the pitfalls and the imperfections and bottlenecks.” He said there were several underlying reasons. “One is to do with the historical legacies,” he says. “Transport was intimately linked in many countries to state monopolies, and that makes it very difficult to change the mentality.”

The obstacles in transport affect all modes, and Monti’s report enumerates the most glaring areas. There is no single market for maritime transport, as customs formalities for ships travelling between two European ports remain subject to custom formalities identical to the ones foreseen for international maritime transport. In the rail sector, track gauges, energy supply and signaling systems differ from one Member State to another and cross-border circulation is much more difficult. The market for rail freight services is still not yet functioning due to incorrect or incomplete transposition of EU law by Member States.

Still, these can be overcome, Monti says. “There are no insurmountable obstacles in this and many other areas,” he says. “But there is the legacy of the past when we had national monopolies, and there were even security and defence issues, and probably insufficient political will. It makes the life of the single market so precarious.”

But beyond particular bottlenecks, there are two broader issues for transport, Monti warns. One is infrastructure: there is a lack of adequate physical interconnections across borders. The other is financing: transport is an area which has suffered because there is not enough sophisticated approach in the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability and Growth Pact, namely not to carve out room for serious public investment.

This is felt especially when it comes to the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) of core roads, railway lines, shipping and aviation routes, and transport infrastructure. So far only a handful of the 30 priority projects have been completed, and Monti argues that governments are not “thinking European” on big infrastructure projects, such as roads, pipelines or water. “It will require a very profound political commitment, and an ability to lean against the winds of the obvious for the key leaders of the Council and the Commission to say, ‘let us also talk about this.” The crisis was due in part because of insufficient integration,” Monti says.

This brings Monti back to an irony about the single market. “It is very simple. But the process of delivering it to business and citizens is hugely complicated, and concerns thousands of directives, regulations, initiatives. It lacks a sense of unity,” he says. While there is a dedicated EU Commissioner for the Single Market, there are 12 or 13 Commission colleagues who are responsible for areas that make up the single market, like transport and energy and the digital economy, etc. He compares it to the euro, which is also complex but nonetheless attracts a concentrated political effort if there is a crisis, like now.

Monti argues that not having a well functioning single market is a more serious problem in a way: not only does it have an impact on the single currency area, but it holds down the overall productivity. “But to improve things you have to modify the situation in areas like customs regulations in maritime trade to legal protections of biotechnological inventions,” he says. “So it is a grey area of thousands of small bits and pieces, none of which is sexy or attracts a high level of political attention.” But, as he says, it certainly deserves Europe’s attention.