The purpose of the contract is to identify, by a legal analysis, to which extent Member States are making full use of the simplification principles foreseen under the Services Directive for the benefit of construction service providers which intend to provide cross-border services, on a temporary basis or on the basis of a secondary establishment, thus benefiting even those service providers which remain active in a domestic market only.

The study also aims at clarifying how Member States apply the mutual recognition principle to service providers coming from another Member State, further identifying voluntary certification schemes available to them which can also provide a basis for mutual recognition.

In addition to this legal analysis and identification of best practices and recurrent problems, interviews with stakeholders should clarify what the situation is, on the ground, regarding costs associated with providing services cross-border, the availability of electronic document submission, procedures and formalities as well as the actual application of the mutual recognition principle and how it can be improved.