Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-07-03-Speech-1-099"
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"en.20000703.7.1-099"2
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". – Mr President, I came to this opinion on behalf of the Legal Affairs Committee with many misgivings. The suggested extension of the directive to a new swathe of businesses and professions looks on the face of it to be both dangerous and burdensome: dangerous in that there might be a threat to the privileged lawyer/client relationship which is the linchpin of access to justice in a civil society, and burdensome because in theory this directive would now extend to your local high street jeweller.
However, it is one thing to require a multinational firm of accountants to comply with this sort of regulation, quite another to require a small firm or one-person business to do so. I was attracted at first by the outrage of colleagues who said that this proposal represented the state turning lawyers and others into policemen on their behalf – but as I read and researched, my views changed. We must bear in mind, as has already been said by the rapporteur, that the proposal we are considering is before us at our request, at the request of Parliament, because we wanted to get to grips with money-laundering, with this international crime which represents a substantial threat to the single market.
I have been impressed by the results obtained in England by the Criminal Investigation Unit, working with lawyers under what are already very extensive rules and regulations, but respecting professional privilege. They have been particularly successful. We should learn from that experience. In Scotland, lawyers are encouraged to see tough rules as self-defence for lawyers, protecting them against the claim of involvement in crime. We should as a Parliament stick to our original desire to tackle money-laundering strongly as a manifestation of organized crime and it seems to me that perhaps this problem will come back to haunt us.
It is a shame that we have not been able to deal with this problem as what it is, a matter of criminal law, but have had instead to deal with it within the strait-jacket of the internal market context."@en1
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