GCCA Calls For Privilege To Be Extended To Corporate Counsel

by Ulrika Lomas, for LawAndTax-News.com, Brussels

11 July 2003

Responding to EU Competition Commissioner, Mario Monti's plans to reform the European legal market, the Global Corporate Counsel Association's (GCCA) European arm has called for legal privilege to be extended to the correspondence of in-house lawyers, as it currently is to the EC's own lawyers.

At present, only the UK and a very few other EU member states extend privileged status to the correspondence of in-house lawyers. However, the European Commission has the power to ignore these corporate counsel privilege rules during competition investigations.

Reporting on the GCCA's response to Mr Monti's plans to remove anti-competitive rules for Europe's 'liberal professions', the Legal Week news service suggested that such a move would boost competition, as corporate counsels would be able to bid for contracts previously farmed out to external firms in order to secure privilege protection.

'This is an example of different treatment [of in-house lawyers]. The disparity in the application of privilege should be eliminated,' Guiseppe Sanna, secretary of the European chapter of the GCCA was quoted as observing.

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