Abstract
Five years ago, the Lisbon European Council was a significant venture for the European internal market, with the hope of making the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world. This objective was to be achieved by 2010. During this summit, EU leaders requested that a strategy be formulated to remove cross-border barriers to services. This was the beginning of a strategy that led to a conditional proposal for a Directive on Services in the internal market. This proposal was presented by the Commissioner Bolkestein on the 13th of January 2004. In this paper, we will try to see the extent to which the "Bolkestein" Directive raises debates related to the method proposed by the Commission to advocate liberalization of services. We will reveal that the proposal of Directive represents a necessary and ambitious attempt to reform the services market with the implementation of a new method. However the attempt has been highly criticized that it could be deeply reassessed in the coming months.
