This is a report from the European frontline. I read the same newspapers as you do and see the hysterical coverage about imminent EU collapse. But I also work in a European organisation - the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) - where we have members from all member states and beyond. And I see the opposite of what is reported in the UK press: a growing need for a coordinated European response to current issues.

Obviously, we principally cover EU legislation that affects lawyers, but there are emerging trends which have nothing to do with that core work. I will focus on two examples. The first is the fallout from the economic crisis. I have written about this before - what is happening in Ireland, Italy and other countries in relation to changes being forced on the legal profession under the cover of the crisis - and will not dwell on the detail again. However, without a central monitoring of events, each bar is on its own and there is no possibility of an informed and united response.

We find that, while the UK press gleefully look towards the downfall of the EU, our services are more in need because of the very threats to Europe’s future. There is no sense of our members saying ‘oh well, Europe is faltering, let us go off and do battle on our own’ - indeed, the opposite is happening. The part of our agenda devoted to the economic crisis is growing and becoming daily more central to our work, as if a whole new purpose has been discovered. And our members welcome our involvement.

The other issue is the provision of services related to new technology. It is a commonplace that technology is washing over our lives, changing them daily. Curiously, it has taken 15 years or so to begin to have an impact on lawyers’ professional lives. Now each bar has to confront the consequences of IT: outsourcing (whether of legal or non-legal services), cloud computing (which is a branch of non-legal outsourcing, although a mighty large one), social media, electronic filing, comparison websites, electronic directories … everything is changing. We at the European centre not only know which bar has developed guidelines on which aspect and so can circulate them for others to use, but we are in a position to develop our own model guidelines, agreed by our members, that everyone can use. Technology - like the other great modern trend (of which it is a driver), globalisation – is borderless, and so it does not make sense for each bar to erect rules that stop at its border. The internet crosses the border regardless.

The EU gives money for practical technology projects. We are, or have been, involved in a few. The most important by far is called e-CODEX, which involves 15 governments (so far not including the UK), and is trying to link up national e-justice systems and initiatives. So you might be able to file a document electronically at your local land registry or court, but what about doing so across borders? To achieve that, you need to establish your lawyer’s identity electronically. Again, there are different national systems for doing this, but how are they to be recognised by another system in another member state?

This could not be more important for the legal profession, since it is clearly the future. What technology enables soon comes to pass. We can pay for transactions electronically in many countries by identifying ourselves through our credit card (with numbers and a password, and increasingly, as here in Belgium, through the addition of identification through a card-reader). Is that the way forward for the legal profession? The problem is that, unlike the banks, the bars may not possess the resources to invest in compatible cards and card-readers for every lawyer. The evidence shows that the future of technology is in any case not in fixed personal computers on a desk, but in mobile devices (smartphones, tablets), and so maybe the technology of lawyer e-identity should not be card-based but something compatible with a mobile device. Just as decades ago the lawyers’ directives were discussed and finalised to establish real-time cross-border practice, so now decisions are being made for the same thing in the virtual world. Cross-border cooperation, at least at a European level, is indispensable.

We have also used EU money to develop a European electronic lawyers’ directory. That way, a Hungarian citizen wanting a lawyer who can speak Hungarian and offer services in, say, personal injury law following an accident on a visit to Denmark can find one when back in his or her own country through a central portal. Nearly all EU bars have electronic lawyer directories, but they are usually only in the home language and are arranged according to widely different criteria. This harmonised Find-A-Lawyer system will be put on the European e-Justice portal later in the year.

The second stage will be to see whether it can be used easily, for instance on the mobile devices mentioned, to prove a lawyer’s identity electronically for the kind of electronic cross-border transactions I have described. In that way, the Find-A-Lawyer directory could be used for multiple useful purposes - finding a lawyer for the citizen and proving identity for the lawyer. There is no other comprehensive and updated (in real time) directory of lawyers in Europe. We are about to submit a funding application to the EU to test just this second hypothesis.

So drown out if you can some of the apocalyptic prophecies in your daily news fix. There is a continuing need for a European response, brought on by difficult and important issues that, because of their nature, are much better discussed and resolved at a European level.

Jonathan Goldsmith is secretary general of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe, which represents around a million European lawyers through its member bars and law societies. He blogs weekly for the Gazette on European affairs