SERVICES DIRECTIVE:

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The goal of the Services Directive is to get the maximum potential of services market in Europe by removing legal and administrative barriers to trade. As a consequence of this, transparency has increased, and for businesses and consumers is easier to provide and use services within the single market.

Benefits for businesses and consumers:

Businesses benefit from:

-easier establishment

-easier provision of cross border services

-simplified procedures and formalities

Customers benefit from:

-strengthened rights of consumers and businesses receiving services

-Higher quality of services

-enhanced information and transparency on service providers

Services directive in practice:

• Points of Single Contact: they are online pages where services providers can get information and complete necessary formalities in all EU countries.

• Rights of recipients of services: the Services Directive enforce the rights of both, consumers and companies when they receive services inside the EU.

• Administrative cooperation: Member States need to cooperate and provide mutual assistance in the supervision of the providers.

 

The Services Directive has a quick guide where it summarises all the basic information

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Implementation of Services Directive:

On December 2009, the Services Directive was transferred to the national legislation of each Member State, which supposed important changes in their laws and the acceptance of multiple projects. This process was controlled by the European Commission (to help European counties, they created a Handbook on implementation of the Services Directive), and it works to improve the Single Market for Services.

The implementation of the general principles and obligations of the Services Directive came with the fact that most of the EU countries had to adopt a new horizontal law, and some of them as France or Germany had to implement several acts.

Enforcement instrument to the Services Directive:

The Services Directive has a procedure whereby all the EU countries must notify to the Commission all changes about regulatory measures affecting services. These changes in national rules have to be non-discriminatory and justified by public interests.

However, it´s very difficult that these new regulations comply with the Services Directive expectations, so this procedure is not very efficient. That´s why on October 2015, the Single Market Strategy implemented several actions to improve the Singles Market for Services.