Fifty years ago last week, some lawyers participating in a conference of the Union Internationale des Avocats (UIA) in Basle, Switzerland, took a boat trip along the Rhine. On that trip, they fell to talking about how best to look after the interests of lawyers in the new Europe that was being built around them.There were only six members of what was called the European Communities in those days: France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and Netherlands. As a result, a sub-committee of the UIA was set up to deal with the issue, and over the 50 years since then that sub-committee has transformed itself into the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), with delegations from 31 full member countries, and from a further 11 associate and observer member countries – therefore, 42 countries in all – and a secretariat of around 12 staff in Brussels.

The CCBE came together again in Basle last week to celebrate its first 50 years , and a commemorative boat cruise along the Rhine took place. It is an appropriate time to look back at its main achievements and changes.

Looking back, there have been three major peaks. First, there was a large amount of work undertaken over decades to settle the free movement provisions, to enable lawyers to take advantage of one of their basic Treaty rights. Lawyers are unique among the professions in having their own free movement laws. It would never happen now, when the custom is to deal with huge groups together in horizontal laws. The provisions of the directives governing lawyers’ temporary services and permanent establishment in another member state took up much of the energy of the early CCBE, alongside measures which accompanied the directives such as the CCBE Code of Conduct for cross-border practice and the CCBE identity card to help lawyers show who they are in other member states. (It is worth adding a smaller peak here: the recognition granted to the CCBE 30 years ago in order to become a party in the AM&S case before the European Court of Justice, a forerunner to the current Akzo Nobel case on whether in-house counsel should be granted privilege; this recognition set the seal on our representative status.)

The second and the third major changes took place more recently. First, there has been the growth in membership of the EU. Even at the beginning of 1990, there were only 12 EU members. Now, just two decades years later, there are 27. (If you want to know why we have 31 full members, you have to add the countries from the European Economic Area – Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein – and Switzerland.) This has made a huge difference to the size of our meetings at all levels, and to our geographical spread. We now represent, through our member bars, around 1,000,000 European lawyers.

Third, the EU has itself changed in respect of the fields it covers. What began as a coal and steel community has grown to cover a wide range of the economy, social and foreign affairs – and justice. The turning point for lawyers took place in mid-October 1999, when a meeting meeting of the European Council in Tampere, Finland, agreed to set up an area of freedom, security and justice (following the Treaty of Amsterdam). Among the several milestones set in Tampere were a greater convergence in civil law and an EU-wide fight against crime. Up until then, the CCBE had mainly focused on regulatory issues, but suddenly new areas of substantive law opened up. There are still discussions about how best we should deal with substantive law in general, but we now have committees covering, among other things, the law on family, succession, crime, contract, company, patents and collective redress. This widening focus within the EU itself was reflected this year by the appointment of the first justice commissioner at EU level, Viviane Reding.

As for the future, it – like our past – is obviously hitched to the fate of the EU. The EU’s weaknesses are well-known: for instance, over-reach linked to enlargement and ambitious planning detached from citizens’ wishes. The fate of the euro will determine many things, too. On the other hand, there are important practical challenges which are taking place at EU and global level to which the CCBE needs to respond, if it is to be of service to its constituency. The increasing spread of borderlessness through technology and globalisation is probably the most important.

Here’s to the next 50 years! Given what radical changes have taken place since 1960, I cannot but be intrigued as to what a review of the CCBE in 2060 would look like.

Jonathan Goldsmith is the secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE), which represents over 700,000 European lawyers through its member bars and law societies

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