European governments are under pressure from the so-called ‘troika’ to rush through reforms that will erode the independence of the legal profession, the Gazette has been told. The reforms include the appointment by governments of non-lawyers to supervise and regulate the profession, with the authority to set fee levels and even dismiss presidents of local bar councils.

Concerns emerged at the plenary session of the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) in Antwerp this week.

The ‘troika’, comprising the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Commission (EC) (pictured), has made structural reform of the legal profession a condition of financial bailouts for countries stricken by the economic crisis.

However, some national governments are going further and are making wide-ranging changes which, they say, reflect public demand. Italian lawyer and chair of the CCBE’s competition committee Giuseppe Scassellati-Sforzolini told the conference that the austerity package adopted at the time of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation sent a shockwave through the profession. ‘It introduced significant changes to our profession with the purpose of accelerating liberalisation.’

He told the Gazette that the ECB and EC required his government to liberalise the legal profession. ‘The government has decreed that we must adopt a new way of regulating the profession within the next 12 months. It has given us no details and has not taken into account the three years we have spent working on a new legal services act.

‘The [government] decree raises real alarm,’ he added. ‘There is no mandate from parliament and the distinction between the legislature and the executive has been rubbed out.’ Solicitor member of the Ireland delegation James MacGuill said that his government was bowing to troika pressure to appoint an over-arching regulator with sole responsibility for all branches of the profession. ‘This is a very different model from the English one, which has the Legal Services Board sitting above the Law Society and Bar Council. It is government interference, empowering politicians to investigate lawyers and damaging our international reputation,’ he said.

The Greece delegation accused the troika of interfering in areas outside its jurisdiction and said that the ‘institutional framework of Greek law firms’ is ‘of no cross-border interest’ to Europe’s financial institutions.

The Portugal delegation said ‘no concrete measures’ have yet been required by the troika, but proposals to reduce the number of reserved activities and alter the way the profession is regulated are expected.