The freedom to provide services (Articles 59-66 of the EC Treaty) covers the same activities as the freedom of establishment, but in the case of services the activities are limited in time and must in some way involve crossing an internal Community frontier. As with the right of establishment, activities connected with the exercise of public authority are excluded. There are three different cases where a cross-frontier element may be involved:
1) The provider of a service may temporarily go to the recipient, crossing the border himself to perform the service in another Member State. This is the typical case which the freedom to provide services is intended to cover. It represents a necessary corollary to the right of establishment, which is designed to help those wishing to establish themselves in another Member State to integrate into working life there permanently.
2) But going beyond that, the Court of Justice has also recognized that the freedom extends to the case where the recipient goes to the country of the provider to obtain the service. Thus the Court has held in particular that tourists and people undergoing medical treatment must also be regarded as recipients of services, as must those travelling for the purposes of education or business.
3) The rules of freedom to provide services also apply where the service provider and recipient remain in their own countries and only the service crosses the border. A typical case of this kind is radio and television broadcasting.