The pioneered responds to the needs of the market

Accountants continue to be headwind: they believe that the countersignature - i.e., the affixing by a professional of his signature on a deed, to give additional security - should not be reserved for the only lawyers.

Problem: end of December, the keeper of the seals, Michèle Alliot-Marie, announced its intention to introduce a Bill to establish the countersignature of an act under private legal writing. Excluded from the device, the accountants are to derail this Bill - out of the interdepartmental and Council of State - currently because they believe that the countersignature must be granted to all professions authorised to draft legal acts.

The Higher Council of the order of certified public accountants (CSOEC) before the Board of competition for notice at the beginning of the year, and obtained for this approach, the support of professional organizations such as the CGPME, UPA and territorial Medef. In early February, Joseph Zorgniotti, the President of the CSOEC, and the Presidents of the two professional unions were also requested to meet Michèle Alliot-Marie.

"I thanked the keeper of the seals for this honest and courteous exchange," said Joseph Zorgniotti. But, I do not have the sense to be heard... Darrois report was a huge chance for the professions of the figure and the law. The pioneered responds to the needs of the market. Businesses need professional advisors who provide, through the countersignature equal legal security and not interested much in the corporate battles.

Mobilization of members

For their part, the two unions seek to mobilize their members. On its Web site, ECF writes: "countersignature reserved exclusively for lawyers Bill clarifies: it is unacceptable." Before the will of the authorities to carry out this reform, ECF believes that "the only way to preserve the sales offices in the field, is to require the extension of the countersignature": "Accordingly, we ask all Accountants to mobilize by sending letters to the Prime Minister, François Fillon, and the keeper of the seals, Michèle Alliot-Marie.".

"Notaries see their monopoly on the backed-up real estate and lawyers, the opportunity to expand their scope of activity with the development in place of an act of counsel, in other words a countersignature, which does not substitute for the deed, which remains the exclusive preserve of notaries. "However, the accountants got nothing", deplored Françoise Savès, the President of the Ifec. "It is not conceivable that a project on the pioneered, such that claimed by businesses, track without prior consultation between all the professions cited in the report Darrois and stops at only the law professions." Indeed, accountants, via their 200 largest law firms (excluding "big four"), believe that the law is also their daily lives, "be it social, accounting or tax law".

"Only the notion of service and usefulness to the company motivates our desire to make a profession of the strong and United, Council that includes lawyers, notaries, accountants, but also other professions" is Joseph Zorgniotti, who will now take contacts across European, after having met with different departments and Matignon and writing to parliamentarians, and then was heard by them. For its part, the Ifec attempts closer associations of lawyers as well as some notaries. A field whose profession patient expected some fruit... To the latest news, the keeper of the seals, in a letter of 2 March addressed to the Ifec, indicates its intention to "put in place very soon a working group specifically devoted to the capitalistic pioneered." In other words, the possibility of creation of holdings combining different occupations of egalitarian and operational manner.