See also: Payment Services Directive and Single Euro Payments Area
Free movement of capital is intended to permit movement of investments such as property purchases and buying of shares between countries.[22] 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.[23] This includes all member States of the EU, even those outside the eurozone providing the transactions are carried out in euro.[24] 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.[25]