Postnikova Elena  - Lecturer, Department of International Law, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Candidate of Juridical Sciences. Address: 20 Myasnitskaya Str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation. E-mail: l_postnikova@mail.ru.

The article contains a detailed analysis of the Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on services in the internal market 2006/123. The sources analyzed include documents of various EU agencies and publications of foreign legal scholars. The study discusses the main amendments to the original Directive draft; the freedom to provide services and determines the scope of the Directive covering about 40% of the entire employment sector and gross product in the EU. A particular attention is drawn to the article 16 of the Directive providing a modern interpretation of a number of fundamental concepts (public order, state security, hurdle). This directive codifies the respect of EU member-states to the right of suppliers to provide services in a state other than the state of origin. The principle of the state of origin has been commented on in detail. It is fixed in the Directive implicitly and reduces the scope of law in the state receiving a service. The authors notice inaccuracies and ambiguities, in particular in art. 14 and 15 of the Directive. The Directive prohibits hindering to render services but codifies grounds which can limit the freedom of services by national acts. The authors conclude that it is impossible to assess the efficiency of the Directive. On the one hand, it aims to facilitate the procedure of rendering services. Its other purposes are freedom of registration for providers of services and increasing the quality of services. It is characterized as a part of measures to ensure the proper functioning of the internal market of services in the member – states. On the other hand, it remains unclear if the provisions in the Directive are efficient as it does not provide for sanctions against violators. The Directive may be described as a document of compromising and even imbalanced nature. It does not make up any uniform legal mechanism to regulate services. Hence, the Directive is criticized in the EU.