Uuuuuh... you could call the EU a lot of things, but "fostering free market" is a hot take. I'm sorry. When you look at the amount of regulation the EU brings to the table (EU basically is the poster child of market regulation), I would go as far as to say that your claim is objectively not true. We can debate how regulation is a good thing because this and that, but regulation - by definition - limits the free market. And there is an argument to be made, backed up literally thousands of regulations the EU has come up with, that the EU limits the free market a lot. When you factor in the regulations that are imposed on its member countries (I mean directly on the goverments) one could easily claim that it is the most harsh regulator on the planet. I could go into detail about the so called green deal, etc. but all of these things are easy to look up on the net / or official sources from the EU portal.