Here in Brussels, we are still trying to come to terms with the European election results. Voters have had their fun kicking Gordon Brown, rewarding Silvio Berlusconi for the topless women at his villa, or giving a seat to the Pirate Party in Sweden (which campaigned on only three issues: copyright and patent reform, and respect for the right of privacy). Those of us who make a living lobbying the European Parliament must now make sense of it.

Overall, there has been little change in the balance of the big parties. The conservative grouping is still in the majority. For lawyers, the good news is that MEPs who have supported our position in the parliament in the past have been re-elected. There are a few of them: Klaus-Heiner Lehne from Germany, Othmar Karas from Austria (both from the majority conservative grouping) and Diana Wallis from the UK (from the liberals), all with a legal background themselves. I may be making a mistake here. It is not always good for a lawyer to give a shout-out to his or her parliamentary friends. Klaus-Heiner Lehne, a partner in Taylor Wessing, was nominated last year for a ‘Worst EU lobbying award’ by transparency NGOs ‘for his dual role as an MEP and lawyer for EU competition and regulatory issues, and for using his position as an MEP to allow lawyers to lobby in the dark’. In the dark? Well, he was nominated, but at least he didn’t win.

Before you pass out from seeing too many crooked bananas and wine lakes pass before your eyes, let me tell you that it makes a difference who is in the parliament. There is a great debate about what percentage of national laws come from Europe – from 84% to 9.1% (read this for an entertaining look at the truth of the various claims). We can all agree that it is a significant figure. And a significant figure of that number affects lawyers.

I will give one example. We are constantly battling to protect legal professional privilege. In the old days, it was in relation to anti-money laundering legislation. Now, in the current wave of regulation of the financial services industry following the economic crisis, new regulatory bodies are thoughtlessly being given power to seize all documents by EU institutions, unaware of the niceties of the lawyer-client relationship. (For the really interested among you, you can look at our success with credit ratings agencies here in Recital 30a and Article 20.3; and we hope that we will have the same success eventually following the publication of a proposal on hedge funds.)

As laws pass their way through the parliament, a well-placed MEP who understands the role of lawyers can swing a large grouping, and so make a difference to the eventual outcome, to the benefit of citizens wanting to consult a lawyer in confidence. So, it may be fun to teach the major parties a lesson and vote for the Pirate Party. But the real consequence in Brussels, with the growth of fringe parties in the parliament, is that there are fewer MEPs who will know or care about legal professional privilege, and who can therefore protect a citizen’s right in complicated legislation which will have to be enforced in the UK.

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.