Regulatory Implications of Servitization in the EU: Can Lawyers Follow the Suit of Digitised Industry?

Servitization as a process of creating value by adding services to products is one of the economic megatrends in modern society. Considering its economic growth and job creation potentials, the Commission has embraced the servitization process, recently claiming that ‘manufacturing and services are two sides of the same coin’ and that ‘in the modern economy, you cannot choose the one or the other (…). You must do both’. Nevertheless, servitization has not been systematically explored by EU legal scholars yet, although it poses several legal challenges for EU law – ranging, inter alia, from competition and consumer law perspectives, environmental and intellectual property law to fundamental rights concerns. In this respect, the speaker will put forward the argument that modern industrial development and new business models that come under the “servitization” umbrella need to be followed by appropriate regulation at the EU level that will control the associated hazards and accelerate its positive effects on the EU economy.

Professor Janja Hojnik holds degrees in law and business, a PhD in EU law and is an Associate Law Professor at the University of Maribor, Slovenia. Her research focuses on free movement within the EU, on correlations between the EU and the WTO, and more recently on the legal challenges of digitised industry. She has been a holder of two Jean Monnet projects; a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Ljubljana, Vienna, Trieste, Sciences Po, CEU and elsewhere; a reviewer of articles for the International Journal of Law and Information Technology, the Croatian Yearbook of European Law and Policy etc. She is a member of a group of authors preparing a commentary on the TFEU for Springer (eds. Blanke/Mangiameli) and is involved in various advisory groups of the Slovenian Government.