Conditions set for direct admission to legal traineeship in a Member State

Access to a legal traineeship in a Member State may be made conditional on a broad and in-depth knowledge of national law, the European Court of Justice has ruled.  

The judgement comes after a request, from the Schwerin Administrative courts, for the European Court of Justice to specify the legal criteria imposed by Community law in relation to the assessment of equivalence for direct admission to legal traineeship, without taking the tests provided for to that end.

This request finds its origins in a peculiar legal debate between Mr Pésla and the German State on the validity of foreign law qualifications in the of practising national law. Although Mr Peśla had obtained a Master’s degree from the Faculty of Law of the University of Poznán (Poland), and had been awarded the title of ‘Master of German and Polish Law’, and ‘Bachelor of German and Polish Law’ as part of German-Polish legal studies at the University of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder (Germany), the German Ministry of Justice did not recognize these as required equivalents to German law.

The German Ministry of Justice further argued that foreign law, such as Polish law, could not be recognised as equivalent given the differences between it and German law. Secondly,  the title of ‘Master of German and Polish Law’ did not attest for the level of knowledge of German law required.

The European Court of Justice upheld the German Ministry of Justice's findings, and stated that a person in Mr Peśla’s situation would not fall within the scope of the provisions of the directives relating to the freedom of movement for lawyers.

The European Court of Justice's final ruling was that, in the absence of harmonisation at European Union level of the conditions of access to legal traineeships, the Member States are entitled to lay down the knowledge and qualifications required.

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European Court of Justice - Justice and Application - Full text