Brussels, 05/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - On Monday, the Commission adopted a report and a communication on the assessment of competition in the sector of the liberal professions in the Member States, which it calls upon to continue the reforms started with the publication of a report on every 2004 (EUROPE 8641). In 18 months, the Commission has noted a certain amount of progress, but the overview remains “somewhat disappointing”, according to a spokesperson, who stressed that in many of the Member States, there was still too many restrictions regulating competition. “At the European Council of March 2005, the Member States committed to reform their economic structures as part of the re-launch of the Lisbon strategy”, the Commissioner for Competition stated in a press release. Neelie Kroes calls on the Member States “to translate this political commitment into concrete action, by attacking anti-competitive restrictions in the sector of liberal professions and by bringing strong political support to this reform at national level”. The Commission's communication, which is entitled “Professional services- scope for more reform”, aims to bring the rules governing the liberal professions up to date and works alongside the “services” directive, the objective of which is to improve the freedom of establishment of service providers from other Member States, and the freedom to provide cross-border services between the Member States.
The United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark are the star pupils on this, having pursued reforms launched within a broader context of pro-competitive regulatory reforms. The situation for the other States is less impressive, with fifteen of them carrying out minor reforms or analysis work and seven others (Czech Republic, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Malta, Spain and Sweden) having notified no activities in terms of reform. Progress is, however, being made in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland, and could lead to significant changes in the structure of the legal professions, and in Germany for a number of professions, the report states.
The report focuses on six professional categories (lawyers, notaries, engineers, architects, pharmacists and accountants, including tax advisers), but others, such as veterinary surgeons, dentists and estate agents, may also be affected when the rules applied to them are updated. Among the kind of restrictions which were analysed, two show the most significant progress: the practice of recommended prices (in Austria, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Slovakia and the United Kingdom) and regulations on advertising (in France, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania and Portugal). Germany, for its part, has put an end to the practice of fixed prices for certain activities of legal professionals and notaries, and Slovakia has relaxed regulations on the professional structure for pharmacists, governing the way they are authorised to carry out their profession. Two Member States (Italy and Slovenia) have made progress in terms of relaxing the quantitative restrictions on entry into the profession and four (Italy, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia) on quantitative conditions. Lastly, no Member State has done anything about rights reserved, but work is underway on this in several States.
Without going so far as to recommend complete deregulation, the Commission feels that removing unjustified rules would be to the advantage of consumers, particularly in terms of reducing prices or fees. This kind of progress can be noted in the countries which have undertaken reforms on, for example, removing lawyers' monopoly on transferring property ownership, or relaxing restrictions on advertising. At this point in time, the Commission is refusing to discuss the steps which may be taken in the future if the Member States do not invest in this more convincingly, but it has not ruled out the option of intervening, as it did in June 2004 against Belgian architects, whose scale of charges was liable to facilitate price coordination (EUROPE 8734). For the most part, the Commission is targeting the national competition authorities to encourage the Member States to take action.