The Liberalization of Legal Services within the EU Internal Market

摘要

The legal profession in Europe has witnessed profound changes over the last 50 years becoming more international and business orientated. By contrast, the regulation of the legal profession in most Member Sates did not follow the same process remaining focused on the local court activities. The local character of these regulations combined with different approaches towards legal services lead to substantial differences between States, resulting in obstacles to cross-border legal practice. In this context, the EU plays a major role in addressing these impediments and contributes to the building of a European legal market. Indeed since its creation European institutions have been working on the removal of the obstacles to the free movement of services within the internal market. Furthermore, since the 2000 Lisbon European Council the Commission has launched a regulatory reform program with the aim to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic-base economy in the world. These two policy objectives underpin the process of liberalization of legal services that is taking place within the EU internal market. The purpose of this article is to analyze this process, through the OECD's five principles for assessing the market openness of a regulatory system, namely transparency, non-discrimination, avoidance of unnecessary restrictions to trade, recognition and application of competition principles.