Opening Europe’s services industry

The European Services Directive, by Juan Delgado

U.S.-Europe Analysis Series. The Brookings Institution. April 2006.

It is a truism that if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no-one. Europe’s controversial Services Directive has arguably fallen into this trap. When it was passed on February 16, 2006 by the European Parliament, angry trade unionists gathered at the doors of the Parliament, protesting that the parliament had gone too far. Frustrated supporters of liberalization, for their part, dismissed it as a watered-down version of the original proposal that would do little to advance the goal of a single market for services in Europe.