Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

If the Lisbon Agenda is the origin of the services directive, it is impossible to reconcile aspects of that directive with Lisbon. When launching the review of the Lisbon Agenda, the European Commission stated: "By modernising labour markets and social protection systems, it will help people seize the opportunities created by international competition, technological advances and changing population patterns while protecting the most vulnerable in society." Commissioner McCreevy has responsibility for this directive and in a BBC interview he stated, "If you consider that the EU has been growing at a snail's pace over the past number of years, then it's obvious that we must do something pretty dramatic to create economic activity". He went on to state: "Seventy per cent of all the EUs GDP is from services, therefore it doesn't take a great mathematician to say we should concentrate [on that]."

The problem is that the Lisbon strategy was never exclusively an economic agenda. The Commission stated it was underpinned by a set of principles based on three mutually dependent pillars, which each supplement one another, namely, the economic, social and environmental pillars. The stated aim is to develop the most competitive knowledge economy, a society with a high rate of employment and social protection and a healthy environment. The project is described as creating a Europe of excellence.

The services directive has components that may see more people at work but at the cost of lower wages and regulatory standards. There is a real fear that the minimum wage will end up being the maximum wage. The Irish Ferries dispute opened the eyes of the public to that possibility. Criticism of the directive by environmental groups, anti-poverty groups, European health care organisations and trade unions show the diverse range of concerns. The environmental network draws attention to the fact that the 25 member states have different laws and policies and highlights the complications the country of origin principle creates for the environmental authorities, which will be required to operate in 25 or more countries to control the activities of their service providers.

The trade union movements seem to favour an internal market for services, but have serious concerns about the country of origin principle. They argue the directive would lead to legal chaos among member states and would make control of monitoring impossible. One aspect they drew attention to is the need for clear definitions of a worker and a self-employed person. The present approach opens the door to fictional self-employment, which in most cases amounts to social dumping. The anti-poverty networks, which represent those most vulnerable, state the services directive, even as amended by the internal committee, would create damaging fractions within national regulatory social service systems.

The aim is not to place barriers in the way of cross-border provision of services but to protect the users of social services, which is essential to contributing to social cohesion. It appears Commissioner McCreevy draws his vision for this directive not from the EU social model but from the United States of America. The question is whether that is from where the Government draws its vision.

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