The regulated professions law gets sabotaged

The Competition Commission is putting a spanner in the works of the governmental plans for the deregulation of professions, describing as «half-measures» the relevant law. It considers that the legislation does not remove the obstacles for the practice of professions, while the real benefits of competition will appear at a very late stage.

In a consultation provided by the Commission, it stresses that «the bill does not lead to the complete abolition of specified legislative restrictions on competition, but to a partial deregulation, both in intensity and in terms of bandwidth».

In fact, it highlights that the Law does not regulate crucial issues of several professions and does not eliminate the regulatory obstacles of their practice. «Such restrictions may affect free competition, if not justified by an overriding state interest in accordance with the principle of proportionality».

The Commission considers that any positive impact of the regulation toward the consumers who use such services and to the national economy, «may not be immediate, as any real changes in the competitive process will occur gradually».

It also stresses the lack of transitional provisions necessary for the smooth transition to the data of new regulations.

Proposals

The Competition Commission considers that the current system of advance collection for attorneys should be replaced by a system of fixed in-advance payments, lump sums for each procedural step or a lawyer presence, which will not be linked to specific «reference amounts» as the law prescribes so far. This is because the Commission deems that the «reference amounts» will keep on being the «minimum fees».

Regarding engineers, the Competition Commission also questions the need to define the «legal fees»  for the calculation of statutory levies and fees, which are calculated based on the amount of their remuneration. To this end, it proposes the use of other mechanisms, such as the minimum notional income of engineers, which result from tax legislation or the adoption of a fixed amounts scale, depending on the value of the operation in question.