Services suspended in the European Union
Freedom of movement for services is among the principles of the Treaty of Rome, the founding document of what is now the European Union. That sector has since grown to employ nearly 70 per cent of the EU's workforce and to account for two-thirds of its gross domestic product.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the European Commission saw the creation of a single market in services as a means of achieving the ambitious goal of the Lisbon Agenda. Launched in 2000, that aims to make the union the world's "most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy" by 2010.
However, a directive on services in the internal market, drafted by the former commissioner Frits Bolkestein, has provoked mass protests by trade unionists. At a EU summit last March, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder declared the proposal unacceptable, and yesterday the European Parliament passed an emasculated version of it. The new text, arising from a deal between the two main parliamentary blocs, the centre-Right European People's Party and the Socialists, will now go back to member states for approval.
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