Premium
Services of General Interest in EC Law: Matching Values to Regulatory Technique in the Public and Privatised Sectors[Note 1. An earlier version of this article was presented at ...]
Author(s) -
Scott Colin
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
european law journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1468-0386
pISSN - 1351-5993
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0386.00110
Subject(s) - public interest , underpinning , matching (statistics) , state (computer science) , competition (biology) , service (business) , european union , public service , public domain , public sector , economics , public administration , competition law , special interest group , law and economics , public economics , political science , law , economic policy , market economy , economy , engineering , ecology , philosophy , statistics , civil engineering , mathematics , theology , algorithm , computer science , biology , monopoly
All the European Union Member States have long traditions of state activity in providing key services (such as the utilities, health and education) to their citizens and underpinning both such direct provision and provision of services by non‐state actors with certain administrative or legal guarantees. In European Community doctrines they are referred to as ‘services of general interest’ within which is a narrower class of ‘services of general economic interest’. The diverse national public service traditions have been challenged both by the requirements of the single market and by other pressures such as fiscal crisis and broader public sector reform. This article examines the means by which services to which special principles should be applied can be identified and focuses on the range of sometimes contradictory values denoted by the term ‘services of general interest’, examining the range of regime types (based on hierarchical, competition‐based and community forms) by which those values might be pursued. The concluding section suggests that the matching of values to techniques should not be made according to the importance of the values to be pursued, but rather by reference to which techniques are likely to be effective given the configuration of interests and capacities and existing culture within the target domain.