Brussels, 11/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission would like to rapidly tackle the barrier that still prevent the providers of services from working everywhere in the European Union as easily as in any Member States. "It is urgent to dismantle the existing barriers and to create an internal market for services", explained, on Thursday, in Brussels a civil servant, while presenting to the press the new strategy for the services sector over the two years to come (see EUROPE of 11 January, p.11). The sector offers, in fact, a huge potential for growth: according to the Commission, 36 million new jobs could be created, if the European Union employed the same percentage of people as the United States in the sector. However, very often, the administrative formalities and regulations, such as the obligation to physically set-up in the country where one has activities, prevents cross border competition from operating. The European executive thus gives itself until the end of 2002 to identify the existing specific problems and to find solutions.
"The approach followed until today in terms of services was of the sectoral kind, which leads us to attaching too much importance to certain details belonging to their specific sectors, however a large number of necessary changes are common to a wide range of services", explains the European Commissioner responsible for the Internal Market, Fritz Bolkenstein. The new European Commission strategy, in two stages, favours a global approach. It will cover all the services sector (such as retail, logistics, transports, accounting, recruitment and other commercial services, but also promotion, distribution, the marketing and after sales services for products).
In 2001, the Commission foresees to accelerate the implementation of a series of initiatives in fields where specific problems are present (such as the recognition of diplomas and the promotion of sales) and where proposals are pending (concerning, for example, the liberalisation of postal services, distance marketing of financial services, public sales offering and VAT on digital products). It will launch, at the same time, an investigation with several thousand EU companies in order to identify the long-lasting barriers to the provision of cross border services.
The results of this study will be published at the start of 2002 and on this basis, the Commission will present another series of measures with a precise timetable in order for the Member States to eliminate all the barriers identified, as well as the non-legislative accompanying measures (code of conduct, etc.). It will only propose harmonised rules "in case of strict necessity".
The full text of the Communication is available on the internet, on the Europa site: http: //europa.eu.int/internal_market).