The economic impact of the Services Directive : a first assessment following implementation

This note presents work done by the Commission Services aiming at quantifying the benefits from the implementation of the Directive across all Member States. This is the first attempt to assess its economic impact taking into account the actual way it has been implemented across Member States. This is an important consideration that somehow limits the insights from previous estimates that assumed a homogeneous implementation across countries and sectors (sometimes full elimination of barriers), while the reality shows a considerable heterogeneity in the degree of implementation across countries. The note is divided in two parts, the first one estimates the economic effects of the reduction or elimination of a number of important existing requirements across specific services sectors and countries; the second one approximates the economic effects of setting up Points of Single Contact, by estimating the impact of the reduction in the procedural requirements related to setting up the affected service providers, and thus in the cost and time to deal with them.