The 8th progress report on the Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP) contains a clear message for all European institutions and individual Member States; there are only nine months left to complete the legislative aspects of the FSAP. Some tricky and long-term dossiers have yet to be completed, including: the Takeover Directive; the Prospectus Directive; the revision of the Investment Services Directive; and the third Capital Adequacy Directive. As we look at what needs to be done in the agreed timeframe we can at least conclude that the European institutions are faced with a real challenge. The completion of the FSAP is not a goal in itself - a single European market for financial services is the objective. Assuming that everybody involved will act responsibly and complete the FSAP on time, the question is whether we will then have reached the goal of a single European market for financial services or whether additional efforts are needed. Since the start of the FSAP the Commission has reacted to market developments by introducing new measures, which will not be implemented before the original deadline of the FSAP. Besides these newly introduced measures one can argue that, especially in retail financial markets, a lot of work still needs to be done before we have a truly integrated single financial services market.