  We examine the behavior of the standard-model electroweak phase transition in
the early Universe. We argue that close to the critical temperature it is
possible to estimate the {\it effective} infrared corrections to the 1-loop
potential using well known $\varepsilon$-expansion results from the theory of
critical phenomena in 3 spatial dimensions. The theory with the
$\varepsilon$-corrected potential exhibits much larger fluctuations in the
spatial correlations of the order parameter, considerably weakening the
strength of the transition.
