McCreevy hits back at services directive critics

Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has hit back at industry critics who have attacked the controversial services directive for being too weak.

His remarks followed a show of support from member states last week for the watered-down version that was approved by MEPs in February.

Ernest-Antoine Seillière, head of the European employers’s organisation UNICE, this week described the current version as "far from perfect" and disparaged EU efforts to create a single market in services.

But McCreevy said people should understand that the services directive as proposed by the previous Commission would have remained just a proposal. "It hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of ever being adopted…It was never going to be adopted," he told European Voice.

The directive aims to create a single market for the services sector, dismantling the legal and bureaucratic barriers that prevent businesses from operating across national borders.

The Commission has said in the past that, once rolled out, it would create an additional 600,000 jobs. Critics claim that in its current form, stripped of the ‘country of origin’ principle that would have allowed service providers to comply with the laws of their home state, the benefits of the directive would be limited.

McCreevy said that he was aware of the very "delicate compromises" that had been made and that the directive has yet to be passed. But the commissioner said that the proposal, even in its current form, would bring substantial benefits to the services area. "Half a loaf is better than no bread," he said.

McCreevy inherited the proposal, originally published in January 2004, from his predecessor, Frits Bolkestein. He faced criticism from, among others, his colleague Günter Verheugen, commissioner for enterprise and industry, who accused McCreevy last year of not working hard enough to sell the proposal.

McCreevy said: "Some people had this wonderful notion that it’s great to keep this rhetoric and blow a trumpet out the window and [say] ‘what a wonderful proposal’ and [then] leave it there.

"So I was then faced with trying to do something substantial with this services area…and we decided, or I decided, that we would move and try to work to get a compromise in this area and that’s what we succeeded in doing with the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.

"Those who advocate that we should stand up and shout about the services directive…I could have done that and, at the end of my five years, I would have been popular with some people but I wouldn’t have had any kind of a directive either. So I just make that [clear] to anybody who wishes to be critical about it, including the esteemed head of UNICE, Mr Sellière."

McCreevy was bullish about tackling protectionist measures taken by member states that might hinder the development of an efficient single market. "We have made it abundantly clear we’re going to stand full square against it," he said. "We have taken every available opportunity of a) speaking about it and b), when we had the legal powers available, to oppose protectionist measures. I think there will inevitably be protectionist tendencies in many member states for as long as there is low growth and high unemployment."

• Next week’s special report on financial services will carry more from the interview with Commissioner McCreevy.

Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has hit back at industry critics who have attacked the controversial services directive for being too weak.