Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on Developments in the business service sector in Europe
Date: 2008-07-09
Institutions: European Economic and Social Committee
Subjects: ESC opinion, building industry, competition law, competitiveness, consumption, know-how, production, single market, working conditions

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Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee on ‘Developments in the business service
sector in Europe’

(2009/C 27/06)

On 6 December 2007, Ms Margot Wallström, vice-president of the European Commission and Commis-
sioner for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy, and Mr Günter Verheugen, Vice-President of
the European Commission and Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry, requested the European Economic
and Social Committee to draw up an exploratory opinion on

Developments in the business service sector in Europe.

The Section for the Single Market, Production and Consumption, which was responsible for preparing the
Committee's work on the subject, adopted its opinion on 11 June 2008. The rapporteur was Mr Calleja.

At its 446th plenary session, held on 9 and 10 July 2008 (meeting of 9 July), the European Economic and
Social Committee adopted the following opinion by 135votes to 2, with 12 abstentions.

1. Introduction

2.2 Priority of Actions

1.1 Ms Margot Wallström, Vice President of the European
Commission for
Institutional Relations and Communication
Strategy and Günter Verheugen, Vice President for Enterprise
and Industry, asked the EESC to draw up an exploratory opinion
on business services by undertaking a follow-up and further
analysis on a previous opinion (1)
that considered business
services and industry.

This study should keep in mind the great importance
1.1.1
attached by the European Commission to the Lisbon Agenda to
preserve and increase European industry's competitiveness by
managing the process of change in line with the European
strategy for sustainable development and on the social level by
encouraging the emergence of representative social partners to
negotiate at the appropriate level.

1.1.2
The achievement of such objectives must move in
parallel with the simplification of the regulatory framework for
industry, a political priority constituting one of the key planks
of the Commission's industrial policy.

1.1.3 Moreover, this industrial policy is characterised by an
integrated approach that takes into account the needs of the
different sectors.

2. Summary of Conclusions and Recommendations

2.1 Recognition of the importance of the service sector in economic

and social development

The EESC feels that there is an urgent need for a genuine change
and broadening of focus towards services, which should no
longer be considered as a mere appendix to the manufacturing
industry. Society is undergoing great changes and services lie at
the centre of these changes. The European Commission must
therefore recognise this development and attach greater impor-
tance to it.

(1) JO C 318/2006 of 23.12.2006, p. 4 (CCMI/035).

Given the broad range of possible actions in policy areas related
to business services, it is of the utmost importance that these
actions be prioritised. Urgent progress needs to be made on the
ten key objectives under the Community Lisbon Programme
2008-2010. These affect the future development of services in a
direct or indirect manner. In the opinion of the EESC, these
priorities should be established in the following order:

— Action on Business Services Policies and a High Level Group. It is
recommended that a High Level Group on Business Services
be set up to undertake deeper analysis of the sector, to
screen existing policies in order to identify and assess the
more effective and successful of these in regard to business
services, and to design concrete policy actions to address
major gaps and needs. Particular attention should be paid to
the very diverse nature of the different business services
subsectors in order to identify which ones deserve major
policy attention and at which level (regional, national, EU)
policy action is justified.

— Labour Market Policies

in Business Services. From a social
perspective an in-depth examination is required at sectoral
level of the challenges being created by the new types of
employment generated by interactions between business
services and manufacturing industry. This analysis needs to
encompass education, training and life-long learning, as well
as the employment conditions of workers, including those
involved in outsourcing processes. To achieve this objective
social dialogue at a sectoral level should be encouraged. In
this context, an agenda should be drawn up to discuss
specific changes in labour conditions and job opportunities
resulting from structural changes affecting the business
services sector.

— Business Services in Innovation Policies. R&D and innovation
programmes and actions for service innovation should be
strongly promoted. Areas such as organisational innovation,
Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) and innovation
management deserve more attention.

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— Business Services Standards Development. Enterprises should be
encouraged to help establish standards through self-regu-
lation after thorough consultation with users of business
services. The support of CEN and its Associates (open
is
platform)
fruits of
to disseminate
successful
innovation, especially through rapid informal
consensus-building

important

the

— Promoting Service Science as a new discipline in education and

training.

— The Internal Market and Regulation affecting Business Services.
The EESC has identified a list of areas that need to be
tackled in order to bring about simplification, clarification
and a reduction of regulatory burdens, obviously without
weakening existing health and safety at work requirements
and worker
representation obligations. Amongst other
things, attention is drawn to the fact that no impact assess-
ment has been carried out of the Services Directive on busi-
ness services and that this deserves a major effort, especially
once the directive has been transposed into national legisla-
tion. This should include the identification of possible
further actions concerning more open trade and competition
in the enlarged EU Internal Market.

— Further

Improvements in Business Services Statistics. Member
States are recommended to collaborate more in order to
improve statistics on business services and, in particular, to
have better information on their performance and their
effects on the economy of Member States — a necessary
tool for governments if they are to help the sector develop
its potential. Recent amendments to Chapter 74 of NACE
will still not be enough to provide the necessary details
required to capture meaningful data on business services.

3. General Remarks

Background. The EESC own-initiative opinion adopted in
3.1
September 2006 — CCMI/035 — proposed that more serious
attention be paid to business services because of the contribu-
tion they make to the performance of European manufacturing
industries. That opinion explained the interactions between
services and manufacturing and the impact on social and
economic performance in terms of employment, productivity
and competitiveness. That was taken as the starting point for
this follow-up and further analysis of business services. It would
be well to start the present opinion by defining business services
as a set of service activities that — through their use as inter-
mediary inputs — affect the quality and efficiency of production
activities, by complementing or substituting in-house service
functions (Rubalcaba and Kox, 2007). This definition has some
equivalence with NACE rev. 1 (codes 72-74) and with the new
version of NACE (codes 69-74, 77-78, 80-82) and the aggrega-
tion of different categories of services. There are two major cate-
gories within business services:

— Knowledge-intensive business services (e.g. computer and
IT services, management consultancy, accountancy, tax and
technical
legal advice, marketing and opinion polling,

services and engineering, personnel services and professional
training and recruitment)

— Operational business services (e.g. security services, cleaning
services, administration and bookkeeping, temporary labour
recruitment, call centres, translation and interpretation).

The aim of this opinion is to help this sector earn more recogni-
tion, to enable it to develop without hindrance and to help
European economies in their efforts to become more competi-
tive in the global market.

Importance of Services and Business Services. Services have
3.2
an increasing place in the mindset of citizens, professionals,
companies, regions and countries. Services to a large extent
dominate the new demands and supplies of economic and
social systems. Although they are present in most aspects of
economic and social life, much of their activity is not captured
by statistics. The traditional breakdown among productive
sectors, even if it is incomplete and hides the strong interrela-
tions among economic sectors, allows us to estimate the impor-
tance of major economic activities (see chart 1). Services as an
economic sector are of increasing importance in Europe, with a
share in total employment smaller (at 70 %) than in the United
States (80 %) and larger than in Japan (67 %). In all these three
areas, the particular subsector of business services has grown at
a very dynamic pace, leading to similar increases in the share of
total employment. Enterprises that provide business services as
their main activity account for 10-12 % of total employment
and value added. If one considers the business services produced
as a secondary activity, the percentage employment would be
much larger. In Europe in 2004 (see chart 3), the countries
leading the business services economy were the Benelux area,
the United
the
France
period 1995-2004, some countries — Hungary, Poland, Austria,
Latvia and Malta, among others — increased their business
service sector quite substantially. This suggests a certain conver-
gence process between some EU countries. These country posi-
tions only represent employment in companies that have busi-
ness services as their main activity. Most of them are SMEs.

and Germany.

Kingdom,

In

3.3
Assessment of Developments. The EESC has now re-assessed
the situation in the light of developments since its previous
opinion of September 2006 (CCMI/035) and noted with satis-
faction how the importance of business services in manufac-
turing has acquired greater weight in decisions taken by the
Commission:

— The Communication ‘Mid-term review of industrial policy. A
Contribution to the EU's Growth and Job Strategy docu-
ment’ (2), issued after the EESC opinion referred to above,
advocates action on the screening and competitiveness
analysis of the service sectors and their impact on industrial
competitiveness. Further
sectoral monitoring should be
conducted if necessary. The outcome would be the identifi-
cation of all obstacles to improvement in competitiveness
and the elimination of possible market failures that might

(2) COM(2007) 374 of 4.7.2007.

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justify actions to address specific problems in industrial
and/or
in-depth analysis by the
European Commission is taking place this year and should
produce results by the end of the year.

sectors. This

service

— The publication in July 2007 of a Commission staff working
document entitled ‘Towards a European strategy in support
of
Innovation in services: Challenges and key issues for
future actions’ (3), the launching of the European platform
for business-related services in February 2008 and the forth-
coming Communication on service innovation (expected
late in 2008) may all constitute an important step towards a
real integration of services in EU innovation policies.

— The adoption of

‘The Services Directive in the Internal
Market’ (4), which must be implemented by 28 December
2009 at the latest, will constitute an important turning-
point in achieving a genuine internal market for services,
provided the provisions of the directive are transposed into
the national legislation of Member States and that steps are
taken to ensure that labour law and collective agreements of
the country where the service is delivered apply. Both busi-
nesses and consumers will be able to take full advantage of
the opportunities it affords. It should also encourage the
business service market to function by facilitating trade and
investment between EU countries and opening up new
opportunities for manufacturing companies to choose more,
better or cheaper services. New competitive advantages in
the use of business services should lead to more employ-
ment,
improved productivity and an enhanced economic
performance.

3.4
Supportive Actions to benefit Business Services. On top of the
major on-going EU actions promoting business services in
industrial and innovation policies, and the potential spillovers
generated by the internal market directive,
there are other
Commission actions that indirectly support the role of business
services in manufacturing:

— Eurostat has now implemented a revision of NACE classifica-

tion to capture more data relating to services.

— The Enterprise Europe Network for promoting entrepreneur-
ship and growth of enterprises in the EU was launched by
integrating the networks of Euro info Centre and the Innova-
tion Relay Centre and so giving entrepreneurs more than
500 contact points (5). This should be of help to SMEs and
therefore to the large majority of business services providers.

— Since 2005, the European Commission has issued proposals
for simplifications and reduction of red tape. The latest

proposals, issued in 2008, relate to fast-track reductions (6).
This is good news for SMEs, who suffer by virtue of their
small size in relation to hefty administrative burdens.

— The Commission document ‘Towards Common Principles of
Flexicurity: More and Better Jobs through Flexibility and
Security’ (7) has been discussed and progress achieved in the
social dialogue undertaken by the social partners. This
should ease the way for Europe-wide implementation of the
concept, with adaptations according to the different circum-
stances obtaining in each Member State. In dynamic busi-
ness services, flexicurity negotiated by the social partners
may be useful when better and quality jobs are promoted at
the same time. The social partners should be involved if the
EU is to succeed in its response to globalisation pressures.

— The launch of

the Commission document

‘Towards an
increased contribution from standardisation to innovation in
Europe’ (8), which amongst other initiatives promotes accel-
eration of cooperation from industry and other stakeholders
implementation and use of standards
in the development,
supporting innovation in relation to a sustainable industrial
policy.

3.5 Major Needs of
the Business Services Sector. Despite the
current progress in actions related to services, major gaps and
needs have to be considered. The current European policy
framework is heavily biased towards the manufacturing industry,
although services constitute by far the largest segment of the
economy and contribute to growth in any aspect of business
and social life.

3.5.1 Most of the horizontal and sectoral
initiatives under
the EU Industrial Policy, both at national and EU levels, focus
on manufacturing industry regardless of the intrinsic supportive
role that business services play in it. There is therefore an urgent
need to establish a balanced EU policy that does not underesti-
mate the importance of business services to the global competi-
tiveness of European manufacturing itself and to the economy
as a whole. Horizontal policies targeted at any economic sector
must be truly horizontal and match the needs of firms and
workers in the new service economy, where industrial and
service sectors are inextricably linked, by create new opportu-
nities for the European economy in the global market place as a
direct result of synergies between them. Many of the EU policy
initiatives that make up industrial policy must be adapted and
applied to services. This involves matters such as: a fully effec-
international trade, state aid
tive internal market for services,
rules,
training and regional
policy, R&D, innovation, standardisation, entrepreneurship, and

labour market, social measures,

(3) SEC(2007) 1059 of 27.7.2007.
(4) Directive 2006/123/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council

of 12.12.2006.

(5) Press Release IP/08/192 of 7.2.2008.

(6) Memo/08/125 of 10.3.2008.
(7) COM(2007) 359 final.
(8) COM(2008) 133 final of 11.3.2008.

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better statistics and information,
taking into consideration,
where appropriate, the specific needs of services. This should
not be taken to mean that all policies should be vertical-specific
to services. It should rather mean that the implications of all
these policies in services should be screened and, when appro-
priate, specific actions should be taken.

— Business Services and the regions. Many regions have a poor
endowment of business services, since these tend to concen-
trate in large metropolitan and high-income regional areas.
At regional level, it is important to promote and stimulate
both the demand and supply of business service and to
make the most of existing networks that are able to increase
synergies among different local players.

3.5.2
areas:

Some major needs can be identified in the following

— Business Services in industrial policies. Following the recent
inclusion of business services and the on-going screening
exercise, more attention should be paid to the specific condi-
tions in which the use of services is favourable to industrial
performance e.g. the role of services for industrial competi-
tiveness and productivity from an economic perspective. To
face global competition, Europe must invest in innovation,
knowledge, design,
logistics, marketing and other business
services — in other words, the entire global value chain.

— Business Services in employment and training policies. Most occu-
pations are in services and this will continue to be the case.
(Policy-makers should not forget that 20 % of intermediate
inputs of manufacturing industry derive from services.)
Therefore, the potential impact of global sourcing/offshoring
in service occupations (up to 30 % according to the OECD
2006 study)
impels Member States to reinforce the right
skills and qualifications that will enable their industry to
face global competition.

— Business Services in innovation and productivity policies. The
promotion of service innovation is essential to reinforce
industrial competitiveness through quality factors. Service
innovation has a major and positive impact on quality,
employment and interactions with clients. At the same time,
business services can offer quality jobs under good working
conditions and knowledge-intensive environments; in these
cases workers contribute to make service innovation possible
and successful. It may enable enterprise to compete from a
better position and workers to develop new labour opportu-
nities. The benefits of service innovation should be aimed at
tackling the stagnant productivity growth rates in business
services. Low productivity growth rates are still dominant in
most countries, even if statistical measurement problems
underestimate the contribution of business
to
overall productivity gains.

services

— Business Services and the Internal Market. The task is to create
a European market for services and so enable the EU to play
a decisive role in the globalisation process by taking into
account all conditions that influence markets and competi-
tiveness. A particular follow-up of the transposition of the
Services Directive in Member States and impacts on business
services is needed.

— Business services and other related policies. There are two types
of business services-related policies: mainly regulatory poli-
cies (internal market, competition, better regulation, public
procurement) and mainly non-regulatory (innovation, skills,
quality and employment, standards, enterprise and SMEs,
regional policies, knowledge and statistics). Particular atten-
tion should be given to the role of standards, the new disci-
pline of Service Science, and statistics.

3.6
Interactions between business services activities and targeted
policies. Chart 4 attached to this report shows how tentative
comprehensive actions could interact and enable business
services to develop forcefully to face the challenges ahead.
Synergies and interactions between different types of policies
should be taken into account.

rationale

Economic

3.7
is needed when designing specific
EU policies to boost the operations of business services, as Kox
and Rubalcaba have recently demonstrated (Business services in
European Economic Growth, 2007). In support of their argu-
ments they mostly highlighted market and systemic failures such
as information asymmetry and externalities.

the

Lisbon Agenda 2008-2010. Policies related to business
3.8
the proposals
in the context of
services could be helpful
for
2008-2010
Programme
Lisbon
(COM(2007) 804 final). Most of the ten key objectives to be
accomplished by 2010 affect services either directly or indir-
ectly.

Community

The Commission will propose a renewed Social
3.8.1
Agenda by mid-2008 and will help to address the skills gap.
Important deficits and needs may be identified in most business
In its opinion on
services, which are very labour intensive.
‘Employment of priority categories (Lisbon Strategy)’ (9),
the
EESC noted that the ambitious Lisbon employment objectives
had only been achieved to a limited extent and that many of the
new jobs created in recent years, particularly in the case of
women, were part-time. Older workers were still faced with a
manifest shortage of suitable vacancies, and young people in
particular were mostly finding atypical (non-standard) forms of
employment, in some cases without proper legal and social safe-
guards. The EESC opinion stressed that in the context of flexi-
curity there should be a high degree of social security, active
further education and
labour-market policies, and education,
training.

(9) JO C 256 of 27.10.2007, p. 93 (SOC/251).

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3.8.2
Earlier this year, the Commission put forward propo-
sals for a common policy on immigration. This may affect
the immigration of highly qualified workers in areas such as
knowledge-intensive business services and less qualified workers
in activities such as cleaning or security services.

3.8.3
The Community will adopt a Small Business Act to
unlock the growth potential of SMEs throughout their life cycle.
Business services is the sector with the highest start-up and
wind-up rates, so particular attention to new SMEs is deemed to
be appropriate. In its opinion on ‘Business potential, especially
of SMEs’ (10), the EESC advocated better targeted and stream-
lined integrated guidelines on SMEs for growth and jobs for the
years 2008-10. SMEs will also benefit from the reduction of
EU administrative burdens by 25 % by 2012.

3.8.4
The Community will strengthen the single market
and increase competition in services. The same EESC
opinion (INT/324, quoted above) complains of the incomplete
single market, especially slow implementation of directives by
Member States, administrative burdens and lack of labour mobi-
lity. These are huge barriers for SMEs to surmount.

The Community will turn the fifth freedom (the free
3.8.5
movement of knowledge)
into reality and create a genuine
European Research Area. Knowledge-intensive business services
may have a role to play in this Lisbon priority.

The Community will improve the framework condi-
3.8.6
tions for innovation. The EESC has also produced an opinion
on ‘Investment and Innovation’ (11). The main thrust was that
Europe has to stay ahead in research, technological development
and innovation and that more funding from the EU budget,
improvement of education facilities and a general raising of
standards were necessary. Also needed were: a social climate
that is open to progress and innovation; the creation of the
necessary conditions and the taking of decisions that give
enough business confidence and optimism for investors to put
their capital into new ventures in Europe; raising awareness of
the fundamental significance of basic research and instilling an
entrepreneurial spirit for those who are willing to innovate and
take risks; and accepting a certain level of failure and losses that
inevitably comes with risk. The EESC also looked at the legal
and social environment for innovative entrepreneurship and an
innovation-friendly market.

3.8.7
The Community will promote an industrial policy
geared towards more sustainable production and consumption.
The role of environmental business services in industrial policy
may be placed under this priority.

3.8.8
The Community will negotiate bilaterally with key
trading partners to open up new opportunities for interna-

tional trade and investment and create a common space of
regulatory provisions and standards.

4. Prioritisation of Actions in favour of Business Services

Action needs to be prioritised because the sphere of business
services involves a wide policy area. In the opinion of the EESC,
the priorities should be as follows:

4.1
Priority 1: A High Level Group on business services
should be set up by the European Commission in the context of
enterprise and industrial policy to ensure that policy actions
take the broader view of services in their interactions with
industry and economic activity as a whole. The following could
be the main objectives of such a High Level Group:

— Deepening analysis of business services needs, including the
needs of the different and very varied subsectors in business
services.

— Screening existing policies affecting business services and
designing concrete policy actions at the appropriate level
(regional, national or EU).

— Recommending strategic objectives to be achieved in WTO
negotiations on GATS, with an emphasis on measures
needed to enable SMEs in services to export.

— Identifying and grouping policy stakeholders in areas where

representation is very limited and fragmented.

— Setting up a European Observatory on business services to
monitor results of measures implemented by EU policy
actions and publicising best practices. Members of
the
Observatory should include representatives of
the EESC,
trade unions, business associations and business services
experts.

4.2
Priority 2: A social dialogue dedicated specifically to the
business services sector should be encouraged to discuss and
formulate recommendations concerning:

— New employment opportunities

— Lifelong learning

— Outsourcing and off shoring challenges

— Identification of skill shortages

— Part-time and teleworking

— The case for flexicurity in business services (This topic has
already been treated in general terms by the EESC in a
recent opinion — SOC/283.)

— Lack of personnel in Knowledge-Intensive Business Services

(KIBS) and the role of immigration

(10) JO C 256 of 27.10.2007, p. 8 (INT/324).
(11) JO C 256 of 27.10.2007, p. 17 (INT/325).

— Mobility.

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In practice, the viability and effectiveness of such sector-based
social dialogue (e.g. recognition of agreements, organisational
support) will depend on the identification and recognition of
and
European organisations of
representative
employees.

employers

— Facilitate some economies of scale by small companies
providing similar services in different EU Member States,
thus leading the way to reducing obstacles to market
integration

4.3

Priority 3: R&D and innovation in services:

— Analysis of modes of innovation in business services and its
impact on productivity and social and economic growth

— Role of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) in the

development of service innovation

— Relationship between ICT developments

and

service

innovation

— Screening R&D and innovation programmes to assess the

position of business services

— Develop a healthy export sector and assist in public service

tenders and sub-contracting of services.

4.5
Priority 5: Further improvements in business services
statistics. Policy actions depend on analysis of ongoing trends
that can only be gauged from clear and meaningful statistics.
The apparent lack of satisfactory productivity increases in rela-
tion to the USA could be partly due to unreliable statistics
based on a methodology used to measure manufacturing perfor-
mance.
statistics
refinement of business
demands not just a decision from Eurostat, but collaboration
from national governments to change their methods of gath-
ering statistics. Particular attention should be paid to measuring
the role of business services within other industrial and service
sectors.

services

Further

— Application of lean manufacturing techniques to services

4.6

Priority 6: Service Science

— Role of service innovation and other possible policy actions
for knowledge-intensive services at regional
level. Use of
innovation policies for promoting supply and demand of
business services.

4.4
Priority 4: Development of Standards. Standards in
services have been slow to develop. They are generally demand
driven. On the side of business service providers there are struc-
tural problems. For the most part, these are small enterprises
that do not belong to representative organisations in their
country and this is also reflected at European level, where the
category is not well represented in any European organisations.
The only way to improve the situation, then, is for users to be
mobilised to express their requirements. The market for business
services stands to gain immensely from clear standards in this
area. The development of standards can be useful to:

— Supplement or even substitute regulation

— Improve quality and stimulate competition

Service science (or Service Science, Management and Engi-
neering, SSME)
is a new emerging discipline covering the
diverse and fragmented approaches towards services: service
economics, service management, service marketing and service
engineering, among others. The need for promotion and better
integration of all these areas is being recognised by service
researchers and businesses. Service engineering provides a good
example within Service Science. It is a specific technical disci-
pline concerned with the systematic development and design of
service products using suitable models, methods and tools.
Although service engineering also embraces aspects of service
operations management, one of its key focuses is the develop-
ment of new service products. At the same time, service engi-
neering is also concerned with the design of development
systems, in other words with service-related questions of general
R&D and innovation management. Integrated approaches for
software and services will
co-engineering physical goods,
become an established feature.

— Help reduce asymmetric information, for the benefit of both

provider and user, in a market that lacks transparency

— Ensure comparability when a user is faced by, and needs to

decide on, different offers

Fundamental research into new business models, methods and
tools will give service science a valuable boost. Finally,
the
growing harmonisation of service standards will encourage the
specification and efficient development of new services (12).

— Disseminate more widely the fruits of R&D and innovation
encouraging innovation to upgrade

thus

programmes,
service quality

— Reduce the number of disputes by clarification of rights and

obligations between service providers and users

— Prevent social conflicts, by compliance to labour law on the
part of service providers and users and, if necessary, through
collective bargaining at the appropriate level

Service engineering is one of the few fields in the service sector
that has been substantially shaped by European research. Closer
integration in international networks and the systematic devel-
opment of an independent service engineering community are
essential in order to sustain a leadership role in this field in the
future (13).

(12) Service engineering — methodical development of new service
Fahnrich,

Klaus-Peter

Hans-Jorg

Bullinger,

by
products,
Thomas Meiren.

(13) Thomas Meiren, Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering,

Stuttgart, Germany.

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Priority 7: The Internal Market and regulation of Busi-

4.7
ness Services

services and neutralise their efforts

the regulatory burden. There are
Reduction and simplification of
several restrictive factors that work against enterprises in busi-
ness
to increase their
productivity and to seek business in other Member States. These
include problems of labour mobility and recognition of educa-
tion qualifications. The volume and complexity of regulation
has grown in recent years and this has increased the burden on
small service providers. The most relevant points requiring
attention are:

— Setting-up and transferring enterprises. The time and money
employed in the setting-up of a new enterprise or transfer-
ring ownership of an existing one is prohibitive for SMEs.

— Barriers to exports of services. The resources necessary to track
down the regulations relevant to their business and the costs
of consultation are expensive for SMEs wishing to export
services. A follow-up in international trade negotiations is
needed to remove unnecessary barriers in external business
services markets for European service providers. The existing
Market Access database created by the European Commis-
sion should help to identify such barriers.

— Restrictions

on multi-disciplinary

are
barriers to the entry of professional service providers that
may be removed when the Services Directive enters into
force.

collaboration. There

— Deficient transposition of EU legislation as well as differing laws
between Member States. Even if regulations are not directly
against the Internal Market, wide disparity among EU coun-
tries hampers market integration.

— Public procurement and regulations concerning competition
for public

between private and state-owned companies
contracts.

Brussels, 9 July 2008.

— Barriers precluding services across Member States. Defensive
attitudes adopted by professional associations
in their
byelaws against allowing practitioners from other Member
States to operate.

— Posting of highly skilled workers. Difficulties encountered in
posting workers to other Member States, even when the
posts are of a highly skilled nature. The EESC opinion on
Posting of Workers may guide possible actions on this
front (14).

— Recognition

of

qualifications. Directive 2005/36/EC of
7 September 2005 on the recognition of professional quali-
fications was to be transposed by 20 October 2007. This
involved the replacement of fifteen earlier directives covering
the recognition of professional qualifications. We should
now have a truly comprehensive modernisation of the Com-
munity system which promotes the EU market for business
services through more flexible and automatic recognition of
qualifications. In the meantime, an initiative by the European
Commission called IMI is seen as a practical approach that
authorities and employers in Member States can take to
check within one central data base the designated authority
in each Member State)
level
(at
authorised to issue certificates of competence and qualifica-
tions and to verify the authenticity of such certificates.

regional or national

— Transposition of the Services Directive. A sectoral analysis would
help business services to make the most out of the new
regulatory environment,
in particular the identification of
remaining barriers during and after the transposition of the
Service Directive. This will be subject to screening beginning
in 2010, so that progress on transposition can be assessed
and the manner in which this is done closely followed. Par-
ticular attention should be paid to the impact on the busi-
ness service economy. The Internal Market
Information
Systems may provide useful information for follow-up and
future simplification of national disparities.

The President

of the European Economic and Social Committee

Dimitris DIMITRIADIS

(14) See CESE 995/2008 of 29.5.2008 (SOC/282). OJ C 224, 30.8.2008,

p. 95.

3.2.2009

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 27/33

APPENDIX

to the Opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee

The following Section Opinion text was modified in favour of an amendment adopted by the assembly but obtained at
least one-quarter of the votes cast:

Point 2.2 — second bullet point:

‘— Labour Market Policies in Business Services. From a social perspective an in-depth examination is required at sectoral level of
the challenges being created by the new types of employment generated by interactions between business services and manufac-
turing industry. This analysis needs to encompass education, training and life-long learning, as well as the employment condi-
tions of workers, including those involved in outsourcing processes. To achieve this objective the agenda for social dialogue
should be extended to look at the specific changes in labour conditions and job opportunities resulting from structural
changes affecting the business services.’

Outcome:

87 votes for the amendment, 35 against and 13 abstentions.