Services account for about 70% of the EU’s economy, 70% of employment and 90% of new jobs.
The Single Market for services is still incomplete – cross-border trade and investment in services considerably lags behind that of goods. The regulatory and administrative barriers are a major factor limiting the availability of services for EU consumers and businesses. Given the importance of services for the EU economy and the significant opportunities they offer for increased trade and investment, reducing barriers has great potential to deepen the Single Market.
Barriers to accessing professional services markets
Restrictiveness indicators for selected professions
The EU restrictiveness indicator (EURI) measures the level of regulatory restrictiveness on a scale from 0 (least restrictive) to 6 (most restrictive) for the cross-border provision of services and the right of establishment for seven groups of professional services with a high share in EU firms’ intermediate consumption (the value of the goods and services consumed as inputs by a process of production) or cross-border mobility. These are accountants (including tax advisers), architects (including landscape architects and interior designers), civil engineers, lawyers, real estate agents, patent agents and tourist guides. The indicator is based on assessments carried out by the Commission and verified with Member States’ authorities.
Source: Regulated Professions Database based on statistics recorded by national authorities.
Professional Qualifications: Positive recognition rates by profession
This indicator refers to decisions taken by host country authorities on the applications of professionals who, having qualified in one EU Member State, apply for their qualifications to be recognised in a second (host) Member State so that they can practise there.
Source: European Commission (2023)
Professional Qualifications: Positive recognition rates by Member State
This indicator measures positive recognition rates as a percentage of all requests received by host Member States from all other Member States for all regulated professions reported in the Regulated Professions Database. It sheds light on the role of recognition of qualifications for access to regulated professions by presenting performance by EU Member State. In general, a relatively high response and recognition rate indicates that it is easier and/or cheaper for professionals to have their qualifications recognised.
Source: European Commission (2023)
Restrictions to trade in services
This indicator measures the level of restrictiveness of regulation in selected services sectors (construction services, courier services, architecture services, engineering services, legal services). The values are based on the OECD’s STRI questionnaire and shows the percentage share of restrictions present. It is available only for 22 of the 27 EU Member States.
Source: European Commission (2024)
Postal services
Postal prices, domestic vs. intra-EU
The graph below shows the public tariff in euro of sending 20 g letters. It indicates how much it costs to send a letter domestically compared with sending a letter within the EU.
Source: European Commission (2022)
Postal domestic transit times
Transit time is the time it takes to deliver postal items. This is measured as the period between someone posting an item and the postal service delivering the item to the recipient’s house or premises. The chart below shows the percentage of priority mail delivered by the next working day (D+1) in the same Member States.
Source: European Commission (2022)