Brussels, 08/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - In a joint press release, the chairman of the Parliament's committee on legal affairs, Giuseppe Gargani (EPP-ED, Italy), and the spokesman for the EPP-ED Group within the same committee, German Christian Democrat Klaus-Heiner Lehne, state that the Commission's competition services “have again misjudged the special role of free professions, namely the legal professions”. The two MEPs, who are both trained lawyers, consider the proposal published on Monday by the Commission (EUROPE 9020) is “not on the target of creating competition for the benefit of consumers” but that it “raises the access costs to justice and legal assistance for taxpayers and consumers”. They consider that from the point of view of competition law, “we cannot deal with free professions as we could with the supermarket around the corner”, and they ask about the system in the United Kingdom which abolished the regulated cost system a long while ago but which is now the most expensive in the EU. They go on to invite Neelie Kroes, Competition Commissioner, to come to the parliamentary committee to “deepen her knowledge” of the subject.