Harmonisation of business environment in the EU: cross-border provision of services and related barriers

This doctoral thesis discusses temporary movements of service providers in the EU Internal Market. Movements such as posting of workers of cross-border movements of self-employed persons constitute one of the pillars of freedom to provide services. As granted by the Treaty on functioning of the European Union, businesses may temporarily conduct entrepreneurial activities in another EU Member State without being established there. Typical cases include installation of equipment purchased by a resident of another EU country, short-term construction works, trainings of personnel in foreign companies etc. Posted workers remain employed by a company in their country of origin and do not seek access to labour markets in the host state. Self-employed persons run their business activities based on a trade license issued in the country of origin and do not set up a business in the country of destination. Nevertheless, in contrast to freedom of establishment, such activities need to be of a temporary -- not repeating, irregular, not continuous - character. In practice, this definition is rather vague and there is no clear frontier between temporary movements and freedom of establishment. Temporary character of postings raises the question how to obtain statistics on numbers of persons providing services through temporary movements or volume of corresponding services. Given the level of integration, there are no statistics based on traditional movements' observing such as visa or work permits. Lack of information about providers' flows may lead to difficulties in estimating the impact of related barriers as well as benefits from further liberalization. The Services Directive 2006/123/EC is the most recent norm regulating provision of services in the Internal Market. Since the final version does not contain the most progressive provisions such as country of origin principle, we may examine whether it is targeted at barriers faced by the businesses during temporary movements. Taking in account all above mentioned topics, this thesis provides complex multi-disciplinary analysis of conditions for provision of services with temporary movements of natural persons in the Internal Market. In particular, it tests following hypotheses: 1. Due to depth of integration and subsequent abolition of visa and work permit requirements; there is a lack of statistical resources on provision of services with temporary movements of natural persons. With existing tools, reliable statistics cannot be obtained. 2. Lack of statistical data on temporary movements prevents us from quantifying impacts of remaining barriers to temporary postings. 3. Nevertheless, there is evidence on persisting discriminatory barriers to postings by most vulnerable businesses - Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). 4. The implementation of Services Directive in its final version has only a limited impact on elimination of barriers which hinder temporary postings by SMEs. The first and second hypotheses were rejected, hypothesis three and four confirmed. Movement of providers, as well as its impact on labour markets of host countries may be estimated via E 101 or A 1 forms issued by national social security authorities. Subsequently, indices of restrictiveness may be constructed following to data collection at national levels or databases. Data mining from SME feedback database proved that Member States still maintain barriers such as license requirements, work permit requirements or lengthy procedures on recognition of qualifications. During the reference period 2006-9 the SMEs mostly complained about problems related to value-added tax, qualification issues or labour law provisions applicable on postings of workers. Such areas are, however, exempt form the scope of the Services Directive. Given the complexity of analysis, findings of this thesis may be used both in practice and academic field