ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complex processes of governance transformation which have been engendered by the project for European market integration in the field of services subject to professional accreditation. This is a sector which has in the modern period come to encompass an extensive and very diverse range of service activities in the member states of the EC. The study focuses on what can be identified, in this as in other areas of economic activity, as a long negative integration policy cycle initiated by the 1957 Treaty of Rome (Davidson 1989; Scharpf 1996). However, what sets the professional services sector apart is that negative integration here was from the outset centred on securing the removal of discriminatory rules based on the national origins of such services and their providers, by applying the principle of mutual recognition to the member states’ systems of professional qualifications and diplomas (de Crayencour 1982; Séché 1988; Orzack 1991).1
