La prestazione dei servizi nella Comunità europea da parte di prestatori non comunitari

The aim of the study is to analyze the legal regime of provision of services in the EU Market by Non-EU Providers. This is one of the more neglected topic for what concerns the liberalization of services in the EU Internal Market, mainly because of the co-existence of various norms regulating the issue, with very different sources. The essay analyzes in a coherent framework those norms, at the three relevant levels of a)Treaty of European Community, b) EU Preferential Trade Agreements, c) GATS. The starting point is the study of EU norms that define - on the “subjective” side - the field of application of EU Freedom to provide services, with the conditions of EU citizenship (or nationality for legal persons) and of the establishment in one of the EU Member States. This issue is examined mainly focusing on the freedom that pertains to Companies owned by non-EU citizens and incorporated in accordance with the law of a Member State and owing an effective link with the economy of one EU Member State (paras 2-5). Moreover, the research deals with Regional Trade Agreements of the EU with Third Parties, that provide for a trade liberalization on a conventional basis (see art. XXIV GATT). Those EU Agreements could be a basis for preferential treatment in the field of services, consistently with art. V GATS, but there are clear signs of EU's reluctance to conclude treaties at a bilateral level for the liberalization of trade in services (paras 6-7). Due to the lack of relevant EU preferential agreements in the field of Services, the legal regime for non-EU service providers is fundamentally governed by the GATS Agreement, in the framework of the World Trade Organization. The final part of the essay is devoted to the Commitments taken by the EU at the multilateral level of the GATS. The analysis of those Commitments leads to interesting considerations: the most important Commitments (and their limits) are still decided by EU Member States uti singuli, with different degrees of attitude to trade liberalization concerning services. This is a clear reflex of the persisting lack of achievement of a Single Market in services; furthermore, another interesting topic is the lack of relevant EU Commitments in the most sensitive ambits, that are “public services” and movement of natural persons providing services (paras 8-9).