Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : This article analyses the parliamentary debates and decision-making related to the highly contentious EU directive on services. It is intended as a contribution to the academic debate on political conflict lines in the European Parliament. Our argument is that neither the left–right cleavage nor a territorial one (old versus new MemberStates) can fully explain conflict at stake on socio-economic issues. Rather, what we can observe is cross-cutting opposition between ‘regulators’ and ‘liberals’.