29.8.2009   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 205/25

1.

Must Articles 3(g), 4, 10, 81 and 98 of the Treaty establishing the European Community be interpreted as precluding national rules, such as those in Articles 1 and 2 of Law No 339 of 25 November 2003 which reintroduce the incompatibility of the practice of law by part-time public employees and prohibit such employees from practising as lawyers, despite being qualified to do so, by laying down that such lawyers shall be struck off the register by the competent Bar Council unless the public employee opts to relinquish his salaried post?

2.

Must Articles 3(g), 4, 10, and 98 of the Treaty establishing the European Community be interpreted as precluding national rules, such as those in Articles 1 and 2 of Law No 339 of 25 November 2003 which reintroduce the incompatibility of the practice of law by part-time public employees and prohibit such employees from practising as lawyers, despite being qualified to do so, by laying down that such lawyers shall be struck off the register by the competent Bar Council unless the public employee opts to relinquish his salaried post?

3.

Must Article 6 of Council Directive 77/249/EEC (1) of 22 March 1977 to facilitate the effective exercise by lawyers of freedom to provide services, in providing that ‘[a]ny Member State may exclude lawyers who are in the salaried employment of a public or private undertaking from pursuing activities relating to the representation of that undertaking in legal proceedings in so far as lawyers established in that State are not permitted to pursue those activities’, be interpreted as precluding national rules such as those in Articles 1 and 2 of Law No 339 of 25 November 2003 which reintroduce the incompatibility of the practice of law by part-time public employees and prohibit such employees from practising as lawyers, despite being qualified to do so, by laying down that such lawyers shall be struck off the register by the competent Bar Council unless the public employee opts to relinquish his salaried post, where those national rules are also applicable to lawyers in salaried employment practising law under the freedom to provide services?

4.

Must Article 8 of Directive 98/5/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 February 1998, which states that ‘A lawyer registered in a host Member State under his home-country professional title may practise as a salaried lawyer in the employ of another lawyer, an association or firm of lawyers, or a public or private enterprise to the extent that the host Member State so permits for lawyers registered under the professional title used in that State’, be interpreted as meaning that it does not apply to lawyers in part-time public employment?

5.

Do the general principles of Community law on the protection of legitimate expectations and acquired rights preclude national rules, such as those in Articles 1 and 2 of Law No 339 of 25 November 2003 which reintroduce the incompatibility of the practice of law by part-time public employees and which also apply to lawyers already registered at the Bar when Law No 339/2003 came into effect, providing in Article 2 for only a short ‘moratorium’ for them to choose between employment and practice of the profession of lawyer?