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Setting the Scene: How did Services get to Bolkestein and Why?

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  • Bruno de Witte

Abstract

This paper traces the origins of the recently adopted general services directives of the European Union, and addresses the question why such an important piece of internal market legislation was adopted so recently, and anyway well after the 1992 deadline for the completion of the internal market. It argues that piecemeal liberalisation of services has occurred on a regular basis ever since 1992. For each of those specific service directives, the EU institutions decided on the appropriate regulatory mix between liberalisation and targeted harmonisation. This regulatory mix was largely abandoned in the Commission’s original proposal to introduce the country-of-origin principle across all services covered by the directive. It is argued in this paper that this regulatory shift was ill-advised and explains the strong political resistance which the original ‘Bolkestein’ draft encountered from the side of other political and civil society actors, leading to a rather different outcome in the final version of the directive.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruno de Witte, 2007. "Setting the Scene: How did Services get to Bolkestein and Why?," EUI-LAW Working Papers 20, European University Institute (EUI), Department of Law.
    • Handle: RePEc:erp:euilaw:p0085
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    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/6929
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    Cited by:

    1. Pedro Schwartz, 2013. "Why the Euro Failed and How It Will Survive," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 33(3), pages 521-534, Fall.
    2. Giuseppe Bertola & Lorenza Mola, 2010. "Services Provision and Temporary Mobility: Freedoms and Regulation in the EU," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 633-653, April.
    3. Bianka Dettmer, 2012. "The European Union's service directive: Contrasting ex ante estimates with empirical evidence," Jena Economics Research Papers 2012-019, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    4. Amandine Crespy, 2010. "Legitimizing Resistanceto EU Integration: Social Europe as a Europeanized Normative Frame in the Conflictover the Bolkestein Directive," Les Cahiers européens de Sciences Po 3, Centre d'études européennes (CEE) at Sciences Po, Paris.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    harmonisation; provision of services; negative integration; positive integration; regulatory competition;
    All these keywords.

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