Services sector is priority in internal market strategy

Date: 24/04/03

By Peter Chapman

Frits Bolkestein, the internal market commissioner, is planning to launch a framework directive to help fill in the gaps in the EU's single market - with the services sector as his top priority.

The proposed law, due to be unveiled in May, will be the linchpin of the new 'medium-term strategy' for the Union's ten-year-old internal market project.

"The Commission is now drawing up legal and other measures to tackle the relevant legal and other barriers," according to The Single Market News, published on Bolkestein's departmental website (http://ec.europa.eu/comm/internal_market/smn/smn-anniversary/index_en.htm).

Legal barriers "will as far as possible be tackled by a framework directive covering all sectors", it states.

But the onus will be on the service sector - covering everything from skiing lessons to accountancy - after a 2002 report concluded that the internal market had failed to open up swathes of national service sectors to competition.

"More progress is needed in all areas, but most of all in services, which make up more than 70 of the EU's GDP and employment there are many remaining barriers which still prevent the full functioning of the internal market in services.

Services are much more prone to being hindered than goods and this holds back the European economy as a whole," adds the web article.

Other priorities in the internal market shake-up will be the swift adoption of new rules governing public procurement and the Commission's existing financial services action plan by the 2005 deadline.

If EU member states, including the ten newcomers joining next year, join industry and embrace the internal market, the rewards will outweigh the gains from the past decade, Bolkestein's team concludes.

There will be more wealth, better education and training, more mobility between countries, a wider and better range of goods and services and less red tape for businesses. More efficient capital markets will trigger faster economic growth and create more jobs.

Frits Bolkestein, the Internal Market Commissioner, is planning to launch a framework directive to help fill in the gaps in the EU's single market, with the services sector as his top priority.