This is how policy comes about.

I was scanning what I assumed was an innocuous resolution from the European Parliament on the future five-year programme for justice and home affairs (the so-called Stockholm Programme). These sorts of documents usually call for peace on earth and harmony among all peoples, no matter what the topic under discussion. But suddenly my eye fell on the following paragraph:

The European Parliament calls for the creation of a European judicial culture embracing all aspects of the law, to this end: …

  • the creation by the professional organisations of a common system of training points/credits for legal practitioners, coupled with a network of legal training bodies across the EU accredited to provide familiarisation courses in national law for practitioners and judges;

What? Suddenly a whole new area of EU harmonisation - never before mooted, let alone discussed - appears in a parliamentary resolution: the creation of a common system of points or credits for lawyers’ training across Europe. Where had this come from? The timetable is tight: the deadline for amendments is next week. The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) has no policy on the issue. We will have to discuss it with our members and try to come up with a suitable response within a matter of days, which is not easy across 27 member states.

It appears that the MEP who came up with the idea is one of the parliamentary reporters on the Stockholm Programme: Luigi Berlinguer, who is also a law professor. The problem is that a common system of points or credits, together with a network of legal training bodies, does not take account of the huge differences and complexities of the systems currently in existence in the member states. We would prefer that a discussion takes place before the formulation of policy; we would prefer to see that the costs, together with the advantages and disadvantages, are known before a proposal is made. It is true that no binding law will come out of this proposal, but once in the public domain there is no knowing where it might end up.

Training of lawyers might seem a dull subject. But it continually throws up the most radical proposals, which sends policy-makers into a spin. And it is made in a higgledy-piggledy way by a range of different bodies, with no apparent plan. Governments are partly involved– for instance, at the very start of training through the Bologna Process, which is trying to harmonise the structure of university education across Europe, including legal education. The Bologna Process wants to see easily readable and comparable degrees organised in a three-cycle structure (for example, bachelor-master-doctorate). It has caused considerable resistance – I understand that German universities, for instance, are refusing to implement it, at any rate for law.

Once you have your law degree, there is the Morgenbesser case (C-313-01), which permits freedom of movement for law graduates to choose where to qualify in the EU. This was a policy made by the European Court of Justice, and its decision came as rather a shock to the bars and law societies, since they suddenly had to adapt their qualification processes to take account of law degrees taken anywhere from Finland to Greece.

And the bars themselves make policy through the CCBE, for instance on qualifying and continuing education.

Now the European Parliament has introduced its own proposals. The disorganisation continues. Someone should bring the stakeholders together for a bit of top-level planning.

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