Epilogue 1. Announcement of My Resignation As I have said above, on 15 November 2017, I announced that I would resign from the EFTA Court by the end of March 2018. My fourth term of office as a judge would have lasted almost two additional years. However, the assault on the Court’s integrity and its consequences had changed the situation fundamentally. After having spoken with Doris and with Laura Melusine who, as I said, in the meantime was a lawyer in a major law firm in Brussels, I came to the conclusion that I needed a new challenge. The Swiss News Agency DPA distributed the Court’s press release; MLex,a leading European antitrust news provider, and POLITICO, the Brussels-based publication, announced my stepping down. Euractiv even ran a story under the title “EFTA court boss quits, reducing UK’s post-Brexit chances”. Most commentators reacted with surprise. I received countless emails and text messages from judges, politicians, civil servants, lawyers, academics and friends who expressed their disappointment. Discussions began on social media and there seemed to be a unanimous feeling that an era was coming to the end. “Nationen”, the Norwegian farmers’ newspaper, whose journalists are very fair, indicated that Norwegian diplomats were relieved because I had failed to “synchronise” my Brexit activities with them. There it was again, this incredible lack of understanding that judges of a European Court are not supposed to be on the leash of their governments. Instead, there is an implicit desire to keep them reined in. European judges are frequently restricted as regards their publications, speeches and interviews, essentially forcing them to act as if they were government agents. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 495 C. Baudenbacher, Judicial Independence, Springer Biographies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02308-9 496 Epilogue 2. The EFTA Court Is Firmly Established When the EEA negotiations were concluded, the Norwegian news agency NTB wrote that the life span of the agreement might be shorter than the length of the negotiations. This prognosis turned out to be wrong. Today, the EEA Agreement is the basis for a singular model of integration in Europe. This model does not aim to create “an ever closer union”, but is limited to facilitating sophisticated economic cooperation. In spite of the fundamental principles of homogeneity and reciprocity, the EFTA Court has been able to uphold specific EFTA values such as the belief in free trade and open markets, fair taxation, efficiency and a modern image of man. At the same time, it has rejected mercantilist claims in major cases. Both in Switzerland and Norway, EEA sceptics complained from the very beginning that the EEA Agreement does not give the EEA/EFTA States a full co-decision right, but only a co-determination right in Single Market legislation. The Swiss Foreign Ministry’s fixation on this issue ultimately led to the rejection of the EEA Agreement by the people and the cantons in the referendum of 6 December 1992. However, if used in a meaningful way, a co-determination right can provide considerable influence. It is furthermore crucial to bear in mind that the EEA/EFTA States have retained their sovereignty with regard to the common policies. Nevertheless, these critics have a valid point. As regards the judicial level, however, this one-sidedness has largely been avoided. The EFTA Court has over the years successfully positioned itself as a valid interlocutor of the ECJ. Self-pity is not something that augurs a bright future. We should rather turn the tables and look for ways to increase the influence of the EEA–EFTA countries in the legislative process. In late August 2016, the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel put forward some new ideas, inter alia con- cerning legislation, in the framework of a possible EU–UK relationship post Brexit. Together with the UK, and possibly Switzerland, the EEA/EFTA States could well achieve improvements in this respect. 3. A Partial Victory of Independence Lord Judge said in his last speech as the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales on 3 July 2013 when talking about the domestic judiciary: It is inconceivable that a judge might lose office or be demoted because he or she gave judgment against the wishes of the government of the day. It is inconceivable that any minister might write to a judge, or get a secretary to telephone a judge, and let it be known that a particular result was expected. That such or similar incidents are also inconceivable in a European court such as the EFTA Court, is less certain. Indeed, my years on the EFTA Court bench were marked by a struggle for the institution’s recognition in both EEA pillars and beyond the EEA as a whole. Oddly Epilogue 497 enough, it was easier to earn that appreciation in the EU pillar than in the EFTA pillar. When I became President in 2003, my influence both on the case law and on the Court’s extrajudicial functions increased. However, opposition from those whose goal it was to keep the Court down also grew. My dual activity as a judge and professor was a good thing. My St. Gallen chair facilitated the building up of a network with Union judges and AG’s as well as with EU Commissioners, EU senior civil servants and domestic actors. Furthermore, due to my teaching and research at St. Gallen, I was able to stay abreast of recent developments in economic law in general, not only in Europe, but also in the Americas and in Asia. I profited in particular from my exchanges with economists and those in the field of business administration. As I have explained, my profes- sorship was also my fallback position should things not work out in Luxembourg. Right from the very beginning, the EFTA Court had the support of the political branch and of important judges in Liechtenstein. In Iceland, the situation was, and still is to a certain extent, mixed. The relationship with the courts was always marked by respect and has steadily improved over the last ten years. However, certain politicians had, and continue to have, difficulties in complying with the country’s obligations under the EEA Agreement. The strongest resistance against the Court, and against me personally, came from Norwegian bureaucrats, certain judges and from Norway’s many government-oriented academics. Whereas the EFTA pillar superpower tends to pat itself on the back for being the best pupil in class when it comes to implementing directives and regulations, its ruling class, including large parts of academia, has been less positive in its dealings with the EFTA Court. By its own admission, the Norwegian Government has always sought a degree of control over ESA. That such control over the Court was not possible disturbed certain bureaucrats. Norwegian courts were thus told to keep cases for themselves and the Norwegian Supreme Court refrained from referring a single case to us for more than 12 years. I am, however, proud to say that the EFTA Court’s relationship with the Supreme Court has improved enormously over the past three years. And thankfully, a number of free spirits have come to the fore in the Norwegian academic world in recent times. The problems arising from the fact that governments have too much influence on the nomination of “their” judge remain, however, unresolved. On 1 January 2018, Páll Hreinsson became President of the Court. In March, the governments appointed Bernd Hammermann to succeed me as a judge. After his time as an ESA College Member, Bernd had served in the Liechtenstein admin- istration, first as head of the then Land and Public Registry Office and since 2013 as head of the Office of Justice. On 9 May 2018, the Norwegian Government published a paper entitled “Norway in Europe. The Norwegian Government’s strategy for cooperation with the EU 2018–2021”. It is the most positive official report on the EEA from Oslo I have seen in my twenty-two and a half years on the EFTA Court bench. Whether this will also change the attitude towards the institutions of the EFTA pillar remains to be seen. Nevertheless, this first step is remarkable. 498 Epilogue On 13 May 2018, Norwegian PM Erna Solberg declared in the Financial Times that Norway was prepared to see the UK join the EEA. “I think we will cope very well if the Brits come in. It will give bargaining power on our side too. And it would ease Norway’s access to the UK” she added. 4. Parting from the Court On 9 April 2018, I left the EFTA Court bench. A solemn undertaking was held in Cercle Cité, in the historic hall where a little more than 15 years ago my presidency had begun and where the Court had held its tenth and twentieth anniversary con- ferences. Swiss national TV reported on the event in the evening news. ECJ President Koen Lenaerts was interviewed and said that with my contribution to securing EEA homogeneity I had gained the respect of all the members of the ECJ and that in a way I had been part of the ECJ. For me this was a gratifying confirmation of my approach to homogeneity. Of course, the ECJ had noticed that in recent years we had taken our own line on a number of important issues. However, it was also understood that we had not done this thoughtlessly. In my farewell speech, I said, among other things, that a trade court cannot fulfil its task without taking economics into account and that this is not limited to competition and State aid law.