  We study string breaking in the three dimensional SU(2) Higgs model, using
values of the gauge coupling for which the confinement-like and Higgs-like
regions of the phase diagram are separated just by a smooth crossover. We show
that even in the presence of string breaking, the confining part of the
interquark potential is well described by the Effective String Theory and that
also the fine details of the effective string, like the higher order terms of
the Nambu-Goto action or the boundary correction, can be precisely extracted
from the fits and agree with the effective string predictions. We comment on
the implications of these results for QCD simulations with dynamical quarks.
