Lawyers and languages in the EU/Schwerer Schlag für Letzebuergisch

Rambeau’s Diary reports a decision of the European Court of Justice of September 19. It held that, in the EU, a lawyer does not have to speak the language of the country he wants to practise in. I got this via Trevor, who is speculating on the significance for the need for a Catalan lawyer to speak Castilian.

ECJ press release.

EuGH Pressemitteilung.

I have my doubts about the Spanish problem, as I imagine member states can make what internal rules for their own lawyers they like. But if a Spanish lawyer wants to practise (in Spanish law) in Finland, need he pass a test on Finnish?

The cases in question concerned Graham Wilson, a barrister and Louise Benjamin. a solicitor. They were refused permission to practise in Luxembourg unless they passed language tests in German, French and Luxembourgish.

Wilson decision EN

LATER NOTE: I wrote this before reading Working Languages – could have saved myself the effort!

2 thoughts on “Lawyers and languages in the EU/Schwerer Schlag für Letzebuergisch

  1. Hope you’re safe, Margaret. That’s a pretty big insect. It’s probably the result of genetic experiments in China. There’s a place in the desert where they train hybrid bugs for military purposes. That’s the theory, at least. The Army has built a huge (900 by 700 meter) terrain that is and exact 1:500 scale copy of Aksai Chin, which China has occupied since 1962. Nobody has been able to figure out what it’s really for.

    http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/484568/

    The alien bug is the best explanation so far.

  2. I will have a look at that some time. At the moment I haven’t got Google Earth on the computer – I removed it when I had to change the sizes of some partitions a couple of weeks ago – so I can’t look at it.

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