I had business with a notary this week. Visiting a notary in Belgium – I suspect the same holds true in all of the continental countries in which they practise – is like entering a scene from a 19th-century French novel. Typically, you are ushered into a specially furnished room, with impressive bookcases lining at least one wall, packed with uniformly bound law books from floor to ceiling, and a picture-window looking over a manicured garden. There is usually also at least one large art object on a low table, probably picked up by the notary on a foreign holiday. You wait a moment or two and the notary enters with a flourish, holding your file. There is no sign of a computer (even my doctor has a computer on his desk these days, for my records, and for research).

I have had business with three notaries in Belgium. They always strike me as well-educated, well-off and bored. I suspect that they are bored because much of their work is ceremonial, required by the state to give formality to a document. I once had to sit through a notary reading out the articles of a company, line by line, even though I had read it myself beforehand and indeed helped the accountant to prepare it – the notary only read it, authenticated it and charged me a very large sum. On other occasions, when the CCBE (an organisation composed exclusively of lawyers, after all) has passed amendments to its statutes, they have not been considered valid until I have gone to visit the notary armed with the proxy votes of our heads of delegations, so that I can formally vote for the statutes once again on behalf of all our delegations in front of the notary, who can then authenticate and register them. This week, I had to obtain a document to the effect that I had signed another document in front of the notary. Wouldn’t you be bored?

Yet the calm exterior hides savage battles about notarial rights. Article 45 of the EC Treaty says that the free movement provisions shall not apply ‘to activities which in that state are connected, even occasionally, with the exercise of official authority’. Since notaries have in some of their functions the delegated authority of the state, they cling to that provision to say that none of the usual treaty provisions should apply to them as they apply to the rest of us lawyers. But the European Commission is chipping away at their rights. The commission was so furious that the French government intervened at the last moment to exclude notaries from the recent liberalising services directive that they have since conducted a campaign against notaries: this month, DG Internal Market added Portugal to the list of countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Luxembourg and Austria) that it has already referred to the European Court of Justice for refusing to allow non-nationals to become notaries; and DG Competition released an unflattering report at the end of 2007 about their participation in the real estate market.

In France, the spiritual home of the notary, president Sarkozy set up a commission (the equivalent of our Clementi, but headed by a Paris lawyer, Jean-Michel Darrois) to see, among other things, whether the notarial profession should be merged with advocates. Darrois decided against that, but recommended instead that lawyers should be allowed their own version of the notaries’ hallowed treasure, the authentic act. This was approved by president Sarkozy, and a law is in the act of preparation. It has brought the notaries out in revolt, and they are at this moment conducting an overwhelming lobbying campaign to see it defeated.

Notaries argue that the authentic act is their contribution to civilisation, because its probative force provides security to the judicial system. They also claim that their governments will never abandon them, because they are a trusted authority in the collection of taxes. Contrary to what I have highlighted from my own experiences above, I know that their professional organisations are busy trying to bring the cutting edge of technological developments to the notarial act. It is difficult for someone from a common law background to understand their role and status. And I have not properly represented their substantive work in my given examples, because I have not come across it personally, for instance in family, property and succession matters.

But it remains nevertheless true that they use monopolies (nationality, scope of practice, sometimes numbers) to sustain their position and to fend off competition. And their role can often be seen as a combined tax and obstruction on legal procedures. If the French law on a lawyer’s authentic act goes through, there will be radical changes throughout the notarial world, since other notarial countries will doubtless take their cue from France. So watch this space for the outcome.

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