Britannia Radio

1 March 2010 Turf Wars Distract while the Law Provides Largesse  It was all so predicable.   The Lisbon Treaty has produced a classic buggers’ muddle by creating an EU with  four leaders all at the same time. So, right now and with an economic crisis on  their doorstep, the ruling bureaucratic elite in Brussels is seriously distracting  itself with an escalating private turf war to determine, for the time being at least, who  is the real boss.  Meanwhile, the much cleverer lawyers across the EU have started taking a  serious interest in the benefits of Lisbon for them. Next Friday, 5 March 2010, lawyers from all over the EU will attend a  one-day conference at the Radisson Hotel in Brussels to discuss, amongst many  other things – wait for it – “the administration of EU justice in a  changing environment.”  The assumptions and implications in such a proposition are truly alarming,  especially for the UK, given that we have a legal system based on common law,  not Napoleonic law.  A keynote address by the Luxembourg lawyer Marc Jaeger, now president of the  EU’s Court of First Instance, will set out the impact of the Lisbon Treaty on  the functioning of his court. His speech is expected to be the first public explanation  by a lawyer of the full legal consequences of ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.  Other topics on the agenda include: *Challenging EU administrative measures  *Full jurisdiction v. limited jurisdiction *Review of the Commission’s leniencies decisions *Competition litigation *Funding private actions  *Competition damages cases in national courts *Multi-jurisdictional investigations and leniency According to the conference documentation, the objective of the meeting  is to help entrench into legal practice the opportunities provided by  recent EU legislation, and to enable lawyers to understand fully the use  of new EU law as a successful litigation tool in future. You have been warned.