Constructing Services in the Enlarged EU: A Race to the Bottom or the Emergence of Transnational Political Conflict?

An inherent tension underlies the European project: between promoting the free movement of goods, capital, services, and labor (the single market) and maintaining social cohesion within and across its member states (the European Social Model). Tensions over these two conflicting logics have been heightened with EU enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe. The "Polish plumber" has become emblematic of concerns among many West Europeans that enlargement will exert downward pressure on existing wage and regulatory regimes through a European wide race-to-the-bottom. While these concerns figured prominently in debates over a Commission proposal to liberalize the service sector, meanwhile two related conflicts over liberalization of services were emerging within and around European courts: the Laval and Viking cases. At issue in both disputes was whether industrial action by Swedish and Finnish unions to prevent firms from taking advantage of lower cost Latvian and Estonian labor violated EU laws on free movement of services. In some respects the cases point to emerging divisions between new and old member state governments, with the former supporting the employers' position and latter the unions. Yet the cases also created opportunities for social forces to mobilize trans-nationally around two alternative visions of the EU: one committed to furthering economic liberalization and the other to constructing an enlarged social Europe. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]