EU bars have succeeded with the latest stage of a challenge to the obligation on lawyers to report clients under the 2001 Money Laundering Directive.

The European Parliament's committee on petitions heard representations from bars in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain and from the Council of the Bars and Law Societies of the European Union (CCBE) last week that lawyers' professional privilege has been undermined too far.


Bernard Vatier, CCBE vice-president, said: 'Lawyers from eastern European countries, who lived under totalitarian regimes, have never been subject to an obligation to report suspicions.'


The petition has now been referred to the EU's legal affairs, and justice and home affairs committees, which have the power to recommend changes. The petitions committee can then put those recommendations to the European Parliament.


Robin Booth, chairman of the Law Society's money laundering committee, said lawyers in England and Wales had already accepted a degree of obligation to report clients before the directive was passed.


'But you can't say solicitors in England and Wales are overjoyed at the position they're in,' he said. 'For it to be aired politically in Brussels is no bad thing.'