The European Court of Justice’s (ECJ’s) judgment in Akzo Nobel Chemicals & Others v European Commission last month confirmed that for the purposes of European Union law, legal professional privilege will not apply to communications between in-house counsel and their clients. For a judgment that has essentially left the law unchanged, it has generated considerable adverse comment.
It gets it wrong in a number of fundamental ways and, arguably, leaves the European Commission (EC) – whose work it primarily affects – on a collision course with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
