'Grasp Euro nettle'

Solicitors in England and Wales should start to think of themselves as 'European Union lawyers', such is the relevance of EU law in their everyday work, the new chairman of the Law Society's European Group said last week.

Speaking to the Gazette at the group's annual conference in Brussels, Cyrus Mehta, a partner at City firm Nabarro Nathanson, said: 'European legislation now crops up in most areas including environmental, employment, tax and, significantly, competition law.

'It is highly relevant to all solicitors in the UK now and there is increased litigation as courts become more confident about handling European questions and problems.'

However, he said that changing lawyers' views so they accept EU law in similar terms to domestic legislation would be 'a huge educational task'.

'Lawyers are slowly grasping its relevance, but real familiarity and expertise in EU law is still restricted to specialists at present,' he explained.

'Even in the big City firms you will find only a small department dedicated to Europe, when in fact it crops up in most areas of law.'

Mr Mehta said his primary aim in the post over the next year was to arrange a number of seminars with expert speakers to educate lawyers about European developments and their impact on domestic and international law.

Andrew Towler