Has the Commission ensured effective implementation of the Services Directive?

The services market is widely recognised not to have achieved its full potential in terms of intra-EU trade. The Services Directive aims to reduce legal and administrative barriers to providers and recipients of services but some years after the 2009 deadline for its implementation, unjustified barriers still persist. The audit found that though the Commission has successfully identified problems in the Member States, it has not sufficiently challenged certain types of obstacles and the measures taken have not achieved results quickly enough. Service providers and consumers continue to be frustrated by not having the level of access to the Internal Market intended by the Directive.