Harmonization of Services in the Internal Market

Barend van Leeuwen is an Associate Professor at Durham Law School, specializing in EU law, particularly the interaction between free movement and national regulation in the internal market.

In his session, he will explored the harmonization of services within the EU’s internal market, discussing key challenges and developments.

A short summary:

In the last decades, free movement of services has obtained a “central” and “connecting” position in the structure of the EU internal market. This position has an important impact on the relationship between positive and negative integration in the internal market. Empirical analysis of the CJEU’s case law on Article 56 TFEU and the Services Directive in the period of 2014 to 2023 shows that there is still a significant amount of negative integration in the field of services. Moreover, there is a significant amount of interaction between positive and negative integration. Because of the nature, aim and scope of legislation in the field of services, it is often difficult for the CJEU to demarcate the “boundaries” between the respective scopes of application of positive and negative integration. Therefore, it is important to develop a harmonious relationship between positive and negative integration, which should be characterised as a “mentoring relationship”.