The Swedish government has identified a need for a greater focus on the service sector in EU policy making and has defined a sharper set of policy objectives to that end.
– The free movement of services in the EU Single Market continues to be hampered by widespread barriers to trade. The service sector is important to the EU economy and competitiveness, and by extension also Sweden’s, says Charlotte Sammelin, Head of Department for International Trade and the EU Single Market at Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
The government will strive to ensure that more EU reforms benefit businesses. That is the conclusion of a new report from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. These reforms include:
These proposals align with several of the priorities that the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise has highlighted ahead of the Swedish presidency of the EU in 2023. In the “Priorities for Sweden’s Presidency of the EU in 2023” report, Swedish Enterprise underlines the need for increased mobility for services:
– The fact that people can live and work where they are needed strengthens the supply of skills and improves how the labour market functions.
The same applies for the need for regulation that stimulates innovation: “regulations must be easy to follow so that they enable innovation and new business models.
Sammelin describes the background to the new emphasis on the service sector:
– The free movement of services in the EU Single Market is still hampered by widespread barriers to trade. The service sector is vital to the EU’s economy and competitiveness, and by extension also Sweden’s.
– Hence our policy document’s emphasis on services and its call on the European Commission to present an action plan in 2022 with concrete measures to strengthen trade in services. It also proposes a number of measures that mainly aim to improve compliance, address identified barriers to trade and increase the free movement of professionals, explains Sammelin.
The government’s new direction is welcomed by Cemille Üstün, Director EU Single Market policy at Swedish Enterprise.
– We welcome the Swedish government’s concrete proposals on how the Single Market should work and getting this issue on the European agenda again. It is positive that the government is focusing on the service sector, which is often overlooked and has been particularly affected by obstacles to the mobility of people during and after the corona crisis.
Swedish non-paper on an Action Plan for the Services Sector - Government.se
The article has previously been published in TN (in Swedish).