Brussels, 14/03/2005 (Agence Europe) - In a speech on "Creating a Europe of opportunities" made on 14 March in Brussels for 2005 Robert Schuman Lecture for the Lisbon Council, president Barosso once again recognised that the draft directive on services in the internal market “can be improved during the co-decision procedure. In particular, understandable fears regarding so-called 'social dumping' need to be addressed. We must also look at the issue of Services of General Interest. At the same time he was keen to point out that the services sector “will offer more and better opportunities to the socially excluded and the millions of new people coming onto the job market”. He warned that this was why “when I say we stand ready to address genuine concerns about the operation of the country of origin principle, for example, this does not imply that we will abandon the principle. The heterogeneity of services means that it would be totally impracticable to legislate for each service. Likewise, the very different provisions in each Member State would make harmonisation very difficult. Therefore, if we are to have a Single Market for services, it will have to be largely on the basis of the country of origin principle, but with appropriate guarantees.” In his speech, Barosso was keen to point out that a study had been carried out in Copenhagen, according to which a services directive would mean advantages for producers and consumers worth around EUR 37 bn. He announced that according to this study, “While productivity improvements would lead to some job losses in certain sectors, total net employment in the EU would rise by some 600,000. Real wages in the EU would rise by 0.4 per cent while the price of services in the EU would fall - by an average of 7.2 per cent in the regulated professions. Barosso explained that the Commission intends to emphasise what is at stake “by releasing a study very soon on the economic costs of 'non-Lisbon'”.