It looks like the Angel of Death has not passed over the
collective intelligence of the EU Commission's Justice and
Consumers DG or the ECAS, the NGO to which the Commission's
advisory function has been contracted out. Marvellous introduction
to the freedom to provide legal services within the EU, one is
tempted to say.
Reference the treatment meted out to an English Solicitor by an
NGO employee posturing as a civil servant who has evidently not
read the second chapter of the TFEU on Citizen's rights and
non-discrimination. even less the wording of the actual Regulation
650/2013 itself, which they misquote and misconstrue. The
childishly political attempt to get individuals to put pressure on
10 Downing Street to "Opt In", when there are perfectly licit
reasons for the UK to abstain, along with Denmark and Ireland is
silly and not within the Commission's or ECAS' powers, even if
delegated.
I have rarely seen a less legally justified comment by a paid
quasi "civil servant" in over thirty years experience. The
Commission and its deleguees are not meant to be politically biased
and to misslead individual EU citizens for whom it is responsible
and cause them financial loss. Neither therefore is the ECAS which
is operating as an NGO, quite how, under the Commision's remit to
give legal counsel on EU issues for free.
The Regulation incidentally is already "in force", in order to
enable people to prepare, contrary to the statement by the
"learned" NGOid concerned but it only applies to deceases after
17th August, 2015. The empyrical conclusion may need to be that
this was written by an unsupervised intern....
The issues are set out at this link which Daniel Harris has approved my
publishing, out of a private Linked-In Group of legal
professionals. Hence the respect of the formatting in order to warn
people that the EU Commission is not giving the correct advice and
effectively missleading not only individuals who ask for assistance
but also their notaries and lawyers.
I draw the readers attention to the comment made by an Italian
colleague on article 34 of the Regulation, and to article 22 which
generally allows any national whether from thr EU or not (the term
State, as opposed to Member State, is used) to opt for the law of
the State from which they draw their nationality. There is no
specific exclusion of Opt out State's nationals from this general
objectively determined right.
In other words, the NGOid is in a position to suffer a "renvoi à
sa copie". There has as yet been no retraction by their
organisation of the false premises that it has been liberally
sowing in Citizens' minds, and incidentally in those of the
legal professionals such as the notary consulting them. If
this is how the liberated market in legal services in Europe is
abused, how is it to function....?
These comments are my own as are those on the discussion, and I
take full responsibilty for these in the hope that others will take
a stand and protest. I understand that the European Parliament may
raise this unfortunate issue with the Commission in the next
committee.
The somewhat pathetic unrepentant reactions of the ECAS to this
issue can be followed on @HarrisTax on Twitter.
What is ironic is that my initial critical observations were
automatically favourited by this organisation. If one makes a
mistake, does one not admit it and correct?