You have heard of the single market, the Single European Act, the single currency, even the single foreign policy. Now for the "single European asylum system", which is designed to end the alleged practice of refugees "asylum shopping" around Europe for the softest touch.
Minimum standards and common rules for processing asylum applications is the "big idea" for the European summit in Tampere, Finland, on October 15th. The preparatory work will be completed by the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, and EU counterparts today in Luxembourg.
Other proposals include an international police academy, extending Europol's remit to traffic king in people, an international small claims system, mutual recognition of court decisions, co-ordination on the seizure of criminals' assets, enhanced attention to victims of crime, and possibly even a European prosecution service.
The agenda will be divided into three broad areas: asylum and immigration, international crime, and judicial co-operation.
The idea is a "people-friendly" summit addressing issues of direct concern to the citizen and the creation of a zone of "freedom, security and justice".
The danger, acknowledged in a letter last week from the president of the Commission, Mr Romano Prodi, to the Finnish presidency, is that the summit could be seen as "repressive": hence a parallel emphasis on the preparation of a charter of European citizens' rights to be approved by the December summit in Helsinki.
Hence too the talk of minimum standards for asylum-seekers, when in reality the net desired effect is both to discourage as many as possible from applying, and to reduce the list of states to which courts will not return asylum-seekers under the Dublin Convention.
British courts, for example, are unwilling to return asylum-seekers to France and Germany because they consider that those states are too ready to send them back to potentially dangerous countries. The Union has already committed itself to agreement within two years on standards and definitions. The idea is that the Tampere summit will kick-start serious discussions.
The meeting is also due to back a more "holistic" approach to immigration by seeking agreements with the states from which most asylum-seekers come, and directing aid at reducing local causes of migration.
More controversial ideas from France and Germany, which would tie development aid directly to success in controlling migration, are unlikely to be backed.
There is also likely to be discussion of sharing the refugee burden through collective EU aid for those states which bear the brunt of mass influxes.
For years the idea of extending co-operation on the full range of justice and home affairs (JHA) issues, from asylum and immigration to the fight against international crime, has been de rigueur at summits.
As far back as the Dublin summit there was an "action plan", a list of projects. Diplomats acknowledge that much of the Tampere proposals involve the repackaging of familiar lists.
But, as one Commission spokesman, Mr Peter Guilford, insists, the same was true of the early days of the single market and single currency. "That's the way the Union works," he says, "but now we have the instruments and the job will be done."
For the Commission, that means borrowing from the single market campaign methods by establishing a scoreboard of member-states' progress on key steps. Ireland and others say the "name-and-shame" strategy has worked in the past but is premature here, and are also likely to resist extra pressure from Mr Prodi to dispense with unanimity voting in justice and home affairs.
For Dublin, the priority will be progress on measures to tackle international money-laundering, by reaching agreement in principle to place a greater onus on accountants, lawyers and banks to reveal suspicious transfers.
In the judicial field, the summit is expected to back automatic recognition and implementation throughout the Union of court judgments such as those in family cases or small claims courts, and to strengthen the access by EU citizens when abroad to affordable justice through local courts.