"The Services Directive puts into motion the free movement of services, one of the milestones of the Single Market of the European Union. Though very ambitious in its draft version, several adjustments have been made and it is being questioned whether the final Directive is helpful at all. This article aims to answer the question by focusing on the productivity of affected companies from retail and the wholesale trade sector with the use of two distinct control groups and employing difference‐in‐difference‐in‐differences design on firm‐level data. The article finds that the Services Directive has significantly increased the productivity of companies though the results cannot be labelled as profoundly causal, as is further discussed in the article."

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