IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mul/j1t56u/doi10.2382-23743y2007i1p9-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Widening Services Liberalisation. Steps Over

Author

Listed:
  • Marco D'Alberti

Abstract

The paper analyses the liberalisation process of public and private services and the crucial improvements recently registered all over the EU. On one hand, this process pushed the elimination, or at least the reduction, of barriers which affect the access to, and the exercise of, service activities; on the other, it allowed the erosion of several monopolistic market structures, i.e. public utilities. Aiming at removing internal market barriers, the EC has recently formulated a draft directive on services (the so called Bolkestein directive), then replaced by a second proposal that focuses on private services and deals with some aspects of the economic public services. This EU scenario performes better at a global level, thus making wider the aim of the liberalisation process. The General Agreement on Trade in Services guarantees free trade and provides for removing the limitations which affect the access to, and the exercise of, all private services, economic public services, and furthermore those of general interest. At a national level, implementation of the EU legislation produced extensive liberalisation, leading not always to a remarkable development in terms of market competition. The paper offers an investigation of the main measures of liberalisation recently adopted by the Italian legislator in reforming services markets. The so called "Bersani Decree" aims at facilitating market access, removing restraints on services development, strengthening consumers' information, improving services quality and, finally, widening competition and regulatory authorities' powers of intervention and enforcement. Pros and cons of this Decree are strongly stressed and the measures are indicated to enhance its impact on the whole economic system. The author concludes that it would be desirable to adopt the procedure proposed in the above mentioned EU draft directive, even before its formal approval, in order to widen services liberalisation both at a national and a local level.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco D'Alberti, 2007. "Widening Services Liberalisation. Steps Over," Economia dei Servizi, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 1, pages 9-16.
  • Handle: RePEc:mul:j1t56u:doi:10.2382/23743:y:2007:i:1:p:9-16
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rivisteweb.it/download/article/10.2382/23743
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.2382/23743
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mul:j1t56u:doi:10.2382/23743:y:2007:i:1:p:9-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rivisteweb.it/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.