The concept of «service»: in International and National Law

Abstract

Background. There are some problems of legal regulation of services. This is the ambiguity of the definition of the category «service».
Analysis of recent research and publications. The works of Golina A. V., Dzera A. V., Drozdova N. V., Kuznetsova N. S., Luts V. V., Mikhaylov S. V., Telestakova A. A., Shchodra A. Yu., Fedorchenko N. V., Sharkova G. Yu., and others are devoted to the problems of the definition of the concept of «service».
The aim of the article is the analysisof the provisions of national and international legal acts, doctrinal works on the definition of «service» and the formulation ofthe author’s definition of this concept.
Materials and methods. Methodological basisisa number of methods: dialectical, system-functional, comparative-legal, method of generalization.
Results. The service is subject to legal regulation of nationaland international legislation.The General Agreement on Trade in Services 1994 lacks the definition of «service».The annexes to the GATS contain legal regulation of tradein certain types of services. «Service» in the understanding of the Code of Liberalization of Current Invisible Operations, 1961, does not have an abstract general character. The national legislation contains more than 250 normative legalacts, which contain the term «service». However, the definition of this concept is notunambiguous, and some regulatory legal acts do not contain the definition of «services». The definition of «service» was implemented in the domestic doctrine. It is necessary to separate the definitions of «services» in legal science from the economic category of «service».
Conclusion. A service should be understood as an action, a job, an operation, the result of an economic activity, a set of activities, etc., regarding the provision to the recipient of a service of a certain good for him, which he can consume both when receiving the service (transport services, medical care), and use its results in the future (consulting, information services, etc.). And such good has signs of intangible assets (information, results of intellectual activity).