The essence of the Bolkestein directive is that EU member states must abolish all trade barriers and get rid of legislative provisions on services in each EU country if those provisions are "disproportionate, discriminatory, and cannot be objectively justified by the public interest." To make it clearer, let us explain the bill in detail.
All issues addressed by the directive can be divided into three groups: freedom of establishment, the country-of-origin principle, and mutual assistance.
Freedom of establishment. This principle means that if an EU citizen can work in the services sector in their home country, they must have an unconditional right to work in their profession in any other EU member state. For example, a dentist from Greece has every right to open a private practice in, say, Sweden. To achieve this, of course, the legislation of all EU member states needs to be harmonized.
The country-of-origin principle. A foreigner (an EU citizen) working in another EU country may, for a limited period, work in accordance with the laws of their home country. That is, the aforementioned Greek dentist would initially work in Sweden under Greek labor law. However, let us recall that if the directive is fully approved, Swedish and Greek laws will be virtually identical.
Mutual assistance. The third postulate is a kind of pedestal on which the first two principles rest. It requires all EU member states to adopt uniform measures to protect consumer rights and guarantee the quality of services provided.
The Bolkestein directive was subjected to the fiercest criticism by trade unions in Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. According to the protesters, the new legislative system will destroy traditional national legislation on services and the environmental regulatory framework; competition will arise between workers from different EU countries, resulting in an overall decline in their incomes. There is also a danger that large companies and small entrepreneurs will move their production facilities and offices to Eastern Europe, where labor is cheaper and economies are less regulated than in the West.
However, as before with all significant EU initiatives, one camp (in this case, the supporters) is led by London, and the other (opponents) by Paris. British Prime Minister Tony Blair promised last year that during his country's presidency of the European Union, it would "solve the most difficult European problems," one of which is the Bolkestein directive. The problem has not yet been resolved, and within Britain itself there are many opponents of labor market harmonization. For example, the Guardian columnist David Rowland noted that the directive is terrible because it puts healthcare and social services on the same level "as real estate companies, fair organizers, advertising firms, and private security agencies."
In the European Parliament itself, the left, for obvious reasons, attacked the directive. For instance, German Evelyn Gebhardt from the Socialist group insists that before opening borders, the quality of life in every corner of the European Union should be harmonized.
As this issue went to press
The European Parliament passed in the first reading the directive on liberalizing the services market in the European Union. The compromise version received 391 votes out of 638 deputies present. The "country-of-origin principle," which was insisted on primarily by the new EU member states, was rejected.