The news grows worse in the eurozone. The tardiness of leaders to come to the rescue of Greece has made a crisis for all of us, and leads me to think about the role of nationality in the EU, with a particular focus on how it plays out in the legal sector.I always feel relief when I have been outside Europe, and I land again at an EU airport, any of them, and see the immigration entry with a blue background and yellow stars – I am home! I look at my fellow travellers in the queue, holding their distinctive maroon EU passports, and regardless of their looks or specific nationality, I feel that I am one of them. The concept of nationality within the EU, as opposed to citizenship of the EU itself, is meant to have been largely abolished. That is why it is always strange when nationality arises as an issue within our borders.

Let me start with notaries. There was an oral hearing a few days ago in the case that the European Commission is bringing against a number of member states for their refusal to remove the nationality requirement in order to become a notary. In those countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, France, Luxembourg and Austria), you can only become a notary if you are already a national. A separate case is being brought against Portugal.

The notaries’ case is contained in article 45 of the Treaty which says that the free movement provisions relating to persons, services and capital should not apply to ‘activities which in that state are connected, even occasionally, with the exercise of official authority’. The notaries have used this provision to escape from the free movement legislation which binds lawyers and allows us greater ease of cross-border practice and qualification.

I am told that 17 member states intervened in the oral hearing: 16 in support of the notaries’ nationality requirement, and only one against (surprise, surprise, it was the UK). It is usually said that governments support notaries as trusted agents for the collection of taxes – but I happen to be currently reading a book, Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, a real-life account of property purchase and refurbishment in Italy, where obvious tax evasion takes place under the notary’s nose, much to the American author’s surprise.

There have been reams written on whether notaries should fall within article 45, and if so, whether all of their activities fall within that provision. I know that many individual notaries do not support the nationality requirement, but see the retention of article 45 as nevertheless vital for their profession. But my question goes much wider than that. Why does article 45 exist at all? One argument given is that, if the notaries go, then judges will be the next to become subject to the abolition of the nationality requirement. But so what? In other words, exactly which activities should be subject to a nationality requirement within the EU?

In my view, there is no reason for notaries to be nationals of any particular member state, just as there is no reason for lawyers to be so. The Reyners case settled this for lawyers, by excluding them from the former version of article 45: ‘Professional activities involving contacts, even regular and organic, with the courts, including even compulsory cooperation in their functioning, do not constitute, as such, connexion with the exercise of official authority.’

And is there any reason for judges to be of a particular nationality? The question of national interests will of course be argued. But in a single market, with more growth each day in an EU-wide justice sector, what sense does that make? There are already foreign judges deciding vastly important cases affecting the UK – they sit in the European Courts in Luxembourg. The advocate general who gave the opinion a week or so ago in the Akzo Nobel case on professional secrecy for in-house counsel was German. The court itself, when it gives its judgment in that case, will involve a rainbow of EU nationalities. So what? We already have foreign judges! The point is their quality, not their nationality.

So, I would like to see a re-examination of the point and scope of article 45. And, to return to where I began, which is for the time being even more important, I would like to see the handling of the current eurozone economic crisis dealt with on the basis of whether European citizens need assistance, and not whether they are Greeks or Germans.

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