Liberalising services trade in the EU

Intereconomics

Volumn 40, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 120-140

  Messerlin, Patrick A ^a  

^a SCIENCES PO   (France)

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EID: 25444506931     PISSN: 00205346     EISSN: 1613964X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10272-005-0144-5     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. For instance, Raoul Marc Jenner: Audition par la Commission IMCA, Parlement européen, 11 novembre 2004.
2. For instance, a recent study on French subsidies for housing shows that 50 to 80 per cent of these subsidies have been absorbed by rent increases, that is, passed from the poor to the housing owners. Cf. Gabrielle Fack: Pourquoi les ménages les plus pauvres paient-ils des loyers de plus en plus élevés ?, Fédération Paris-Jourdan (Cepremap), mimeo 2005.
3. Marc Guillaume: Audition par la Commission IMCA, Parlement européen, 11 novembre 2004.
4. Patrick Messerlin : Measuring the Costs of Protection in Europe, Institute for International Economics, Washington DC 2001.
5. Rapport sur les obstacles à l'expansion économique (Rapport Rueff-Armand), Imprimerei nationale, Paris 1960.
6. For instance, Steil has documented this evolution in the Investment Services Directive case. Cf. Ben Steil: Regional Financial Market Integration: Learning from the European Experience, Royal Institute of International Affairs, London 1998.
7. Paul Conway, Véronique Janod and Giuseppe Nicoletti: Product Market Regulation in OECD countries: 1998 to 2003, OECD Working paper ECO/ WKP(2005)6.
8. These indicators focus on products, but they include services, such as distribution, covered by the Directive. They are calculated for the EC15 Member States plus the Czech and Slovak Republics, Hungary and Poland.
9. Patrick Messerlin, op. cit.
10. J. M. Barroso: Creating a Europe of opportunities, The 2005 Robert Schuman Lecture for the Lisbon Council, 14.03.2005.
11. Copenhagen Economics: Economic Assessment of the Barriers to the Internal Market for Services, 1.1.2005. The full report is available at www.copenhageneconomics.com.
12. European Commission: The Internal Market - ten years without frontiers, SEC(2002) 1417 of 7.1.2003.
13. Primary construction industry and secondary construction work. The latter includes demolition and wrecking, painting and lacquering, and the roofing trade. On the initiative of the city-state of Hamburg, the law was extended at the last minute to encompass the maritime shipping assistance services (harbour tugs). The aim of this initiative was to protect around 100 jobs in Hamburg from competition from unemployed harbour tug crews in the new Länder of eastern Germany.
14. There is a good overview in Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Arbeit: Informationen über die Anwendung des EU-Beitrittsvertrages bei der Beschäftigung von Staatsangehörigen der Beitrittsstaaten of 28th January 2004: Http://www.bmwa.bund.de/Redaktion/Inhalte/Pdf/ eubeitrittsvertrag-beschaeftigung-frage-antwort,property=pdf.pdf
15. Directive 96/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 1996 concerning the posting of workers in the framework of the provision of services, OJ L 018, 21 January 1997, pp. 1-6.
16. Cf. footnote 1.
17. Besides minimum tariffs, the length of holiday time, holiday pay or additional holiday money are also covered.
18. In theory, statutory minimum wages can also be introduced in Germany by means of executive order in accordance with the Minimum Employment Conditions Act of 11 January 1952.
19. Cf. recital (12) of the directive: "..the Community law does not preclude Member States from applying their legislation, or collective agreements entered into by employers and labour, to any person who is employed, even temporarily, within their territory, although his employer is established in another Member State; ... Community law does not forbid Member States to guarantee the observance of those rules by the appropriate means."
20. Cf. Kronberger Kreis: Entsendegesetz - ein Irrweg, Financial Times Deutschland, 22 April 2005, p. 34.
21. Details in H.-W. Sinn: Basar-Ökonomie Deutschland. Exportweltmeister oder Schlusslicht?, in: Ifo Schnelldienst, No. 6, 2005, pp. 1, 20.
22. Cf. sections below on competition of regulatory systems and softening the impact of structural change.
23. According to H.-W. Sinn, op. cit., p. 40.
24. Ibid., p. 20 with evidence.
25. Cf. W. Franz: Protektionismus, in: ZEWnews, April 2005, p. 8; Kronberger Kreis, op. cit.
26. Cf. J. Eekhoff: Entsendegesetz - eine Aushöhlung der Wirtschaftsordnung, in: Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik, Vol. 45, 1996, pp. 17, 24.
27. Cf. quotation in footnote 7.
28. Judgment of the Court of 23 November 1999 in the joined cases C-369/96 and C-376/96 (Arblade and Leloup), European Court reports 1999, pp. I-08498, I-08526.
29. According to the Kronberger Kreis, op. cit.
30. For details cf. W. Koberski, G. Asshoff, D. Hold: Arbeitnehmer-Entsendegesetz, 2nd edition Munich 2002, Article 1, No. 167 et seq.
31. Cf. for example H.-W. Sinn: The New Systems Competition, Oxford 2003.
32. Annual Report 1989/90, Stuttgart 1989, subindex 465; very critical, however, with regard especially to the German "Entsendegesetz" Annual Report 1995/96, Stuutgart 1995, subindex 390 et seq. and Annual Report 1996/97, Stuttgart 1996, subindex 320 et seq.
33. I b i d.
34. Cf. J. Eekhoff, op. cit., p. 21.
35. Cf. footnote 25.
36. Cf. Table 1.
37. A typical example is H.-W. Sinn: Ist Deutschland noch zu retten?, Munich 2003, pp. 451 et seq.
38. R. Adlung: Liberalisierung und (De-)Regulierung von Dienstleistungen in der Welthandelsorganisation: Versuch einer Zwischenbilanz aus Sicht der Europäischen Gemeinschaft, in: P.-C. Müller-Graff (ed.): Die Europäische Gemeinschaft in der Welthandelsorganisation, Baden-Baden 1999/2000, Nomos, pp. 131-156.
39. J. Croome: Reshaping the World Trading System - A History of the Uruguay Round, The Hague, London, Boston 1999, Kluwer Law International.
40. For a more detailed discussion of the modal scope of the Agreement and its application to individual sectors see, for example, WTO: Guide to the GATS: An Overview of Issues for Further Liberalization of Trade in Services, The Hague, London, Boston, 2001, Kluwer Law International.
41. For example, the schedule of Switzerland provides for the continued operation of public monopolies on fire and national damage insurance in 19 cantons; access to other parts of the country is largely unrestricted.
42. If such services are provided in "the exercise of governmental authority", i.e. neither on a commercial basis nor in competition, they are completely exempt from the GATS in any event.
43. The individual EC MS are WTO Members as well. While the Uruguay Round commitments scheduled by the Communities apply only to the then 12 MS and the results of the extended negotiations on telecom and financial services to 15 MS, the schedule envisaged to result from the ongoing round is set to cover all 25 current MS.
44. R. Adlung: GATS and Democratic Legitimacy, in: Aussenwirtschaft, Vol. 59, No. II.
45. For example, the existing EC commitments on health services under the GATS could imply that current Commission proposals aimed at facilitating the mobility of patients between the MS, including through streamlined reimbursement procedures for health care costs, are applicable as well to patients seeking treatment in third countries. (All MS, except Finland and Sweden, have undertaken full national-treatment commitments on consumption abroad for hospital services and, except Finland, for medical and dental services.) The Commission's explanation of the proposed Services Directive - "... is an internal market instrument and therefore concerns only service providers established in a Member State ..." - may thus need to be qualified. The actual impact of the Communities' commitments may depend, nevertheless, on whether the relevant foreign-established facilities and their staff provide "like services" and are recognised to meet relevant EC qualification requirements and standards. See Commission of the European Communities: Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and the Council on services in the internal market, COM(2004)2final/3, Brussels 2004, p. 15.
46. The overview was prepared by the OECD Secretariat on the basis of an informal document by the WTO Secretariat. See OECD: Trade in Services: A Roadmap to GATS MFN Exemptions, Working Party of the Trade Committee (TD/ TC/WP(2001)25/FINAL), Paris 2001. The EC is counted as one entity.
47. Examples include not only traditional arrangements favouring citizens of Commonwealth, Francophone and Portuguese-speaking countries (UK, France and Portugal), but also reciprocity requirements vis-à-vis third countries (Austria: Access of financial service suppliers; Finland and Sweden: Maritime caboCage; France: capital participation in news agency services and access to press agency services; Germany: Chartering of foreign ships; Italy: Purchase of real estate as well as capital participation in broadcasting and publishing services; Spain: establishment of commercial presence in road transport services).
48. K. Nicolaïdis, J. P. Trachtman: From Policed Regulation to Managed Recognition in GATS; in: P. Sauvé, R. M. Stern (eds.): GATS 2000 - New Directions in Services Trade Liberalization, Washington DC 2000, Center for Business and Government, Harvard University and Brookings Institution Press, pp. 241-282.
49. By end-April 2005, there was only one notification under Article V: 7(a), from Australia and New Zealand, that had been submitted "also in recognition of any notification requirements under Article VII:4" (WTO document S/C/N/66 of 21 October 1997). For a brief discussion of the relationship between the two Articles and for further references see OECD: Service Providers on the Move: Mutual Recognition Agreements, Working Party of the Trade Committee (TD/TC/WP(2002) 48/FINAL), Paris 2003.
50. Among developed countries, only "Other communication services" have proven less popular. They consist of postal, courier and audiovisual services. Maritime services are a special case insofar as the negotiations were not completed at the time, but suspended until the current round.
51. R. Adlung, M. Roy: Turning Hills into Mountains? Current Commitments under the GATS and Prospects for Change, WTO Staff Working Paper (ERSD-2005-01), Geneva 2005.
52. See footnote 9.