Regulating Services In The European Union

This book offers the first overview of services regulation in the EU, tracing its history from early, sector-specific interventions to the complex modern landscape of 'new governance' techniques. It sets the legal developments in their economic context and critiques the varied regulatory methods with which the EU has experimented.

"The new book Mapping Ecosystem Services provides a comprehensive collection of theories, methods and practical applications of ecosystem services (ES) mapping, for the first time bringing together valuable knowledge and techniques from leading international experts in the field." (www.eurekalert.org).

Professional services are a key component of the EU internal market economy yet also significantly challenge the legal framework governing this internal market. Indeed, specific professional regulatory structures, which are often the result of a blend of government and self-regulation, hold clear potential for conflict with EU free movement and competition law rules. Hence this book looks at the manner in which both free movement and competition laws might apply to such self- and co-regulatory set-ups, and at the leeway given to quality considerations (apparently) conflicting with free movement or competition objectives. In addition, since court action will seldom suffice to genuinely integrate a market, the book also explores those instruments of EU secondary legislation that are likely to impact the most on the provision of professional services. However, the book goes beyond a mere inventory to ask how EU Internal Market policy could contribute to the optimal legal environment for professional services. A law and economics analysis is employed to investigate the need for specific professional rules, the preferred type of regulator (self-, co- or government regulation), and the level - national and/or European - at which regulation should be adopted. As becomes clear, the story of the market for professional services is one of market and government failure; the author is thus left to compare imperfect situations where market failures compete with rent-seeking efforts, the tendency towards over-centralisation and national protectionism. This book offers both an in-depth legal analysis of the EU framework as it applies to professional services as well as a more normative evaluation of this framework based on insights from law and economics scholarship. It will therefore be a valuable resource for all practitioners, policy-makers and academics dealing with professional services, as well as, more generally, with questions of quality and self-regulation.

"This volume has its roots in a workshop on Deregulation and the Environment, organised by the Working Group on Environmental Studies (WGES) of the European University Institute in Florence in May 1996"--P. x.

Regulating Europe explains why economic and social regulation is rapidly becoming the new frontier of public policy and public administration in Europe, both at the national and EU levels. Statutory regulation, implemented by independent regulatory bodies, is replacing not only older forms of state intervention but also, to some extent, the redistributive policies of the welfare state. Thus Regulating Europe is an examiniation of the emergence of the regulatory state as the successor of the Keynesian welfare state of the past. Contributions emphasize the parallelism of policy developments at the national and European levels. Part one provides the necessary theoretical background, including a new model of demand and supply of Community regulation. The second part presents a series of case studies of particular regulatory policies and institutions in the UK, Germany, France, Spain and the EU. Part three evaluates current policy and institutional developments, pointing out how the lack of a tradition of statutory regulation in Europe affects the design of the new institutions. Special attention is devoted to the issue of the democratic accountability of expert, politically independent agencies - a problem which, contrary to widespread opinion, is as severe at the national level as it is in Brussels. It is suggested that the requirements of democratic accountability, and of subsidiarity, cannot be met by re-nationalizing European policies, much less by increasing the current level of centralization. A more promising solution is the development of regulatory networks closely integrating national and supranational regulators.

This book critically assesses how the rise of the collaborative economy in the European Union Digital Single Market is disrupting consolidated legal acquisitions, such as classical internal market categories, as well as the applicability of consumer protection, data protection, and labour and competition law. It argues that the collaborative economy will, sooner or later, require some sort of regulatory intervention from the European Union. This regulatory intervention, far from stifling innovation, will benefit online platforms, service providers and users by providing them with a clearer and more predictable environment in which to conduct their business. Although primarily intended for academics, this book also appeals to a wider readership, including, but not limited to, national and international regulators, private firms and lobbies as well as online platforms, consumer associations and trade unions.

Laws and regulations affect the daily lives of businesses and citizens. It is important that they are designed in a way that takes account of their social, environmental and business impacts and ensures they remain relevant in today’s fast-changing context. The second edition of the Better Regulation Practices across the European Union report analyses recent developments and current practices for improving the quality of laws and regulations across all 27 EU Member States and the European Union.