Free Movement of Services
The free movement of services and of establishment allows self-employed persons to move between member states in order to provide services on a temporary or permanent basis. While services account for between sixty and seventy percent of GDP, legislation in the area is not as developed as in other areas. This lacuna has been addressed by the recently passed Directive on services in the internal market which aims to liberalise the cross border provision of services. According to the Treaty the provision of services is a residual freedom that only applies if no other freedom is being exercised.
The Free Movement of Services is established in Article 56 TFEU, with further guidance in Article 57 – 62 TFEU. Exceptions are found in Articles 51-55 TFEU (common with Freedom of Establishment). The freedom prohibits restrictions on free circulation of services within Member States. Services are defined in the negative, “they are normally provided for remuneration, in so far as they are not governed by the provisions relating to freedom of movement for goods, capital and persons.” (Art. 57 TFEU)
The services are distinguished from freedom of establishment based on their temporary rather than permanent nature and from free movement of workers based on the fact that the freedom affects corporate entities and individuals outside of the relationship of employment. Chapter 3 of Title IV applies to services as long as either the service moves across the border, or the provider moves or the service itself moves (e.g. an internet purchase).
The freedom to provide services is directly effective, meaning that member states must ensure that national laws do not conflict with the provisions. The Court has recognised that the obstacles to freedom to provide services may arise both from discriminatory and indistinctly applicable rules.
Two directives are also of particular relevance - the Posting of Workers Directive, sometimes referred to as the Posted Workers Directive, and the Directive on services in the internal market.
Read more about this topic: Internal Market
Famous quotes containing the words free, movement and/or services:
“The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry,
The true, sick-hearted slave,
Expect him not in the just city
And free land of the grave.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis—German National Socialism.”
—Hermann Goering (1893–1946)
“Men will say that in supporting their wives, in furnishing them with houses and food and clothes, they are giving the women as much money as they could ever hope to earn by any other profession. I grant it; but between the independent wage-earner and the one who is given his keep for his services is the difference between the free-born and the chattel.”
—Elizabeth M. Gilmer (1861–1951)