The Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) has voted narrowly to join the appeal against the recent European Court of First Instance ruling on legal professional privilege for in-house lawyers.


The court ruled in the Akzo Nobel case in September that in-house lawyers cannot claim the protection when under investigation by the European Commission, refusing to recognise them as independent. The CCBE was one of the groups to intervene on the in-house lawyers' behalf.



Delegates at the CCBE's plenary meeting in Bruges were split because there was no community-wide harmonisation of the rules governing the profession. In some jurisdictions, in-house lawyers are not allowed to be members of the bar or law society and so are not subject to their ethical codes.



Delegates were also discouraged by counsel's opinion that any appeal would have less than a 50% likelihood of success.



The meeting also saw Avocats Sans Frontières (ASF) - or Lawyers Without Borders - receive the inaugural CCBE Human Rights Award for its work in some of the world's most dangerous countries. ASF projects include tackling the recruitment of children as soldiers, rape as a crime against humanity, restrictions on the movement of lawyers and land law.



The CCBE's human rights committee, which presented the award, told delegates that this year's International Human Rights Day on 10 December would include a call to action in protest at the attacks on the rule of law in Pakistan.



Peter Köves, who heads Clifford Chance's Hungarian arm, was elected as the CCBE's 2008 president.



Jonathan Rayner