Lawyers in Holland are set to be the only ones in Europe not to play a role in their own regulation, the Council of Bars and Law Societies of the European Union (CCBE) warned last weekend.

The plenary meeting approved its response to a report which recommends that the Dutch government end self-regulation and impose a lay-majority regulatory council above the Netherlands Bar Association (NBA) (see [2006] Gazette, 18 May, 6).


'The regulatory structure of the legal profession varies from country to country,' the response observed. 'No country has total and unrestricted self-regulation of the legal profession. However, there is in all European countries which are members of the CCBE a significant extent of self-regulation. Self-regulation, conceptually, must be seen as a corollary to the core value of independence.'


It insisted that going down the road of government or third-party regulation would endanger the role of the legal profession in the administration of justice and maintaining the rule of law.


Ending self-regulation would also be contrary to a Council of Europe statement of the freedom of exercise of the profession of lawyer - adopted by ministers in 2000 - and the United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, the CCBE argued. Both documents stress the importance of independence and with it self-regulating professional associations.


The NBA is opposing the recommendation and Jeroen Brouwer - head of the Dutch delegation to the CCBE - said they hoped the Ministry of Justice would not support the idea.


CCBE president Manuel Cavaleiro Brandão predicted that the report could have a strong impact across the continent, while one of his predecessors, Hans-Jürgen Hellwig, added that it introduced a new argument into the reform of legal services regulation - that the regulatory council was actually the best way to protect the legal profession.


'We need to demonstrate that self-regulation is better than external regulation,' Mr Hellwig said.