Following the keynote “More Statistics, Less Barriers” by Frederic De Wispelaere, Session II of the European Labour Mobility Congress 2026 focused on how services operate across the EU Single Market and their growing importance for production, trade and supply chains across Europe.
The discussion showed clearly that services are no longer merely supporting the economy — in many sectors, they have become essential to keeping it operational and competitive.
Moving beyond traditional labour-intensive models, the session highlighted how many areas of cross-border service provision are becoming increasingly professionalised, regulated and quality-driven, particularly in knowledge-based sectors and person-centred services such as live-in care.
Through practical examples and case studies, speakers including Marta Zięba-Szklarska (Count’em), Monika Fedorczuk (Warsaw Employment Office), Agata Kostyk-Lewandowska (National Labour Inspectorate), Paulina Piskor (Contrain), Andrzej Szybkie (ZUS) and Artur Beck discussed how cross-border services:
– support relocation and industrial processes – enable transportation and logistics – help address labour and skills shortages across Member States
The discussion offered a pragmatic, practice-based perspective on labour mobility and challenged many simplified assumptions about posted workers and the sectors they support.
