LA PROFESSIONE FORENSE E IL PROCESSO DI INTEGRAZIONE EUROPEA

The legal profession is evolving greatly in response to the EU’s approach focusing on the aim of guaranteeing lawyers the possibility to supply their services into the european context. Moreover, there is a prevailing the will to introduce the competition rules also in the professional service. As a matter of fact, there are no doubts that the professions have experienced a deep transformation whereas the competition rules in the market place have begun to penetrate in this field, especially in those Member States where legal professions are traditionally closely regulated by national governments and professional bodies, with differing restrictions (such as price regulation and advertising restrictions). As regards the qualitative access restrictions, taking the different forms of minimum periods of education, periods of professional experience and professional examinations, it seems that they can provide the right quality standard for professional services. EU's Member States have reached a high level of harmonization in the legal education; thus providing an important contribution in order to ensure that only practitioners having appropriate qualifications and competence can supply their legal service into the Internal Market.