The extent to which low-wage trade competition in the service sector with posted workers should be allowed in the EU has been a hot issue recently. In Sweden, the so-called Vaxholm conflict has become the symbol for this debate.

This report analyses how far the EU is integrating its energy and climate change policies. The report focuses on identifying possible synergies and trade-offs between the EU’s most recent package of legislative measures to combat climate change and its energy security objectives.

This article argues that the current EU regulatory system in the field of food safety fails to live up to the objectives it has set for itself. The existing decision-making scheme is based on a classic risk analysis model that relies heavily on scientific risk assessment.

Following the food scandals of the 1990s and the White Paper on Food Safety in 2000, the Community made an impressive overhaul of its regulation of food safety. Whilst a number of legal measures focusing upon the elimination of barriers to trade remain in force until this day, the Community put into place a completely new scheme, covering all stages in the food chain and all types of foodstuffs.

The European Commission has proposed a common energy policy conducted in a spirit of solidarity among Member States as an instrument to address the issue of energy security. The authors of this report, Chloé Le Coq and Elena Paltseva, highlight that such a common energy policy may entail biased economic incentives and thereby cause problems with so-called moral hazard.

The General Court has since 1998 developed its practice on cross-border healthcare. But the development has taken place without guidance from EU regulators.

Energy security has gone high up on the EU's agenda under both the framework for energy and security policy. The development means that Member States must consider how and to what extent energy policy should be part of a more general attitude in the field.

Healthcare is one of the core policy areas of the welfare state which for a long time has been regarded as unaffected by the process of European integration. However, healthcare has increasingly been subjected to the principles of the internal market during the last ten years.

Flexicurity has become a popular concept and is associated with a modern labour market policy. The author discusses the dangers of using such a vague concept as flexicurity and identifies four potential problems.

The first issue of SIEPS European Policy Analysis deals with regulatory issues within telecommunications The analysis is part of the research project The EU's Internal Market: Effects on Central Areas.  2007:1epa Better regulation of mobile telecommunications (114.