The EU legislator is currently seeking to adapt the legal framework for cross-border business activity to today’s increasingly digitalised world. The German CNUE Presidency’s main concern will without doubt be primarily focused on the notary’s role in company law against the background of the envisaged EU instruments in this field (namely the Company Law Package and the Single Digital Gateway).

Many Member States, for the benefit both of the consumer as well as public welfare, have outsourced essential tasks and functions in connection with company law from the commercial courts to the notary as an external state official who is responsible for ensuring the reliability of the commercial register alongside the register clerks. Given the outstanding legal as well as economic significance of the commercial registers, which are often endowed with public faith and allow for a bona fide acquisition of rights, it will be one of the main challenges for the CNUE to assist the EU legislator on its evolutionary way to implement the achievements of today’s digital world into the EU’s legal framework while at the same time preventing any disruption within this sensitive, current system of company and registration law in place in the Member States.

Besides, 2018 will also be dedicated to the training of notaries across Europe on the new EU regulations on matrimonial property regimes and the property consequences of registered partnerships that will be applicable in 17 EU Member States as of 29 January 2019. To this end, we are planning to organise a series of cross-border training events based on the already tested model of the seminars on the EU Successions Regulation – a success that earned us notaries of Europe the European Commission’s explicit acknowledgement for achieving the highest density of legal training of all legal professions in the Union. We thus feel encouraged to continue on this path, always keeping in mind that Europe is not just what is given to us by the European institutions what rather what we ourselves make out of it!