Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-15-Speech-3-374"
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"en.20060315.27.3-374"2
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".
Mr President, the Commission thanks the Committee on Legal Affairs for its question and Mr Lehne for doing a great job here this evening. He presented his views quite clearly.
The Commission recognises the special role of the legal sector in the good administration of justice and in promoting access to justice – by the way, in response to the example cited by Mr Lehne, the Commission also recognises that supermarkets are very important and very honourable members of our community – we are certainly not challenging this. But we are saying that we need to look afresh at the current regulation of the sector to see what can be modernised to promote new types of services and new ways of doing things. That is in the interests of the users of these key services.
So we are proposing that Member States use a proportionality test to see how far current regulations are all really serving the public interest. This approach fully respects the subsidiarity principle. It allows for national circumstances, and the special characteristics of the legal sector, to be taken fully into account.
The Commission certainly agrees with the need for some regulation. I repeat: our initiative is about better regulation, not deregulation. We also recognise that it is the Member States’ right to determine the balance between state rules and self-regulation by professional bodies.
On the question of the right of Member States to fix tariffs, I would underline the position of the Commission in its report of February 2004. In our view the
judgment suggests that state measures delegating regulatory powers to professional bodies in order to fix tariffs can be challenged under the competition rules – for example, Articles 3(1)(g), 10(2) and 81 EC – if the state does not have the final word and exercise effective control of the implementation of these tariffs. We are expecting further clarification on this when the Court delivers its preliminary ruling in the
case (case C-202/04).
Finally, there are the internal market rules. These are at issue in another case pending before the European Court of Justice, the
case (case C-04/04), again concerning the Member States’ responsibility for price fixing. The Commission considers that minimum prices for lawyers’ services are a restriction on the freedom to provide services because they neutralise the competitive advantage of service providers from other Member States. Moreover, we see no justification for minimum prices under the proportionality test, since they do not per se guarantee quality, access to justice, or good ethical conduct."@en1
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