Streho, Imola --- "Services trade in the European Union: internal and external approaches to market opening" [2014] ELECD 336; in Sauvé, Pierre; Shingal, Anirudh (eds), "The Preferential Liberalization of Trade in Services" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2014) 160

Book Title: The Preferential Liberalization of Trade in Services

Editor(s): Sauvé, Pierre; Shingal, Anirudh

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781782548959

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Services trade in the European Union: internal and external approaches to market opening

Author(s): Streho, Imola

Number of pages: 36

Abstract/Description:

The European Union is the most important global player in international services trade today. The period since the 1990s has seen a constant rise in the service sector of the EU economy. Services play a major role in EU growth, jobs and exports, accounting for over 70% of Europe's GDP and a similar proportion of aggregate employment. Cross-border services trade represent 25% of the EU's global trade, a level some 20% above the world average. The expansion of EU services trade has in recent decades exceeded service output growth by a sizeable margin. An important defining characteristic of services trade is the immediacy and proximity of the relationship it entails between the provider and the recipient (consumer) in many transactions. A derivative feature of services is that they are provided via various modes of supply which can trigger and indeed often require the mobility of production factors (capital and labour).