Regional differentiation of the service sector development in selected European countries

The aim of the work is to assess the contemporary state of structural changes in the service sector in the basic territorial division units of France, Germany, Poland and Ukraine, with particular emphasis on the group of producer and business services considered as one of the leading factors of regional development differentiation. Very significant differences were found in the level of development and structure of regional service systems of the countries surveyed, which essentially reflect their different socio-economic experience. Attention was also paid to the presence of certain universal, typical for all considered countries, developmental regularities, which concern primarily the concentration of producer and business services in the most prosperous regions. They constitute, in each case, specific poles of growth, in which the most important developmental impulses are transferred successively to other territorial units of the country.