The European Services Forum is an organisation representing service industries across the European Community. The membership comprises more than thirty European trade federations and more than forty international companies based in countries which are members of the European Community.

Membership covers all member countries of the European Union and covers a wide range of service industries including banking, insurance, telecommunications, postal and delivery services, shipping, tourism and hotels, retail distribution, legal services, accountancy, management consultancy, architects, engineers, surveyors, IT services, publishing, audio-visual, energy services and environmental services. The European Services Forum was a registered NGO at the WTO Ministerial Conferences in Seattle (USA) in December 1999, Doha (Qatar) in November 2001, Cancun (Mexico) in September 2003 and Hong Kong (Hong Kong -China) in December 2005 and was also an official member of the European Union delegation during these conferences.

World trade in commercial services accounts for 20% of world exports, but services account for 60% of annual flows of foreign direct investment. Domestically, the service sector dominates most developed economies in the world and is the largest sector in the economies of the developing world. The European Services Forum, therefore, strongly supports and encourages the movement to liberalise service markets throughout the world and to remove both trade and investment barriers. The ESF recognises that there is strong evidence to support the view that liberalising service industries such as telecommunications, financial services and power distribution brings benefits to both the developed and developing world. However, the ESF also believes that liberalisation needs to be accompanied by a regulatory infrastructure which encourages transparency, competition and fairness. The liberalisation process should be a managed process, which takes into account the social and cultural background of the liberalising country.

The European Union is the world’s largest exporter of commercial services accounting for 26% of total global services transactions and for more than 40% in terms of balance of payments. The European Union is also the world’s largest importer of commercial services. European service industries therefore have a key interest in playing a major part in the new round of multilateral negotiations.

The ESF supports a comprehensive round of negotiations because it believes that countries have different priorities in the WTO negotiations and therefore there will not be a wide agreement without a comprehensive round.

The ESF has produced a series of papers covering important horizontal issues for service industries. Subjects covered include: emergency safeguards, public procurement, regulation, scheduling commitments, e-commerce, trade and investment, subsidies and the movement of business personnel. All these issues affect a number of different service industries and have been discussed in detail with trade negotiators.

The European Services Forum works closely with other organisations representing service industries in the developed and the developing world.

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