Liberalization of services in Europe: Polish perspective on economic implications of the Services Directive

The original EU Service Directive proposal met widespread opposition and was subsequently narrowed down. Some believed that the competition from the New Member States would endanger the situation of the “old” EU service providers. We assess the importance of the Service Directive for Poland and other EU members by performing a revealed comparative advantage analysis and a computable general equilibrium simulation of the outcome. The liberalization provides minimal welfare gains for Poland and the main opponents of the Service Directive, while they are expected to be higher for small economies open to trade in services.