On 20 June 2014, the EFTA Court held a conference with over 200 participants from all the branches of the legal profession on the occasion of its 20th anniversary at Cercle Cité in Luxembourg. H.E. Xavier Bettel, Prime Minister of Luxembourg, opened the conference with a keynote on ‘European integration’. He made it clear that no EU State could have ‘Europe à la carte’. President Carl Baudenbacher called the EFTA Court an example of the judicialisation of international law and said that the EEA Agreement due to its institutions has worked better than expected. Brussels lawyers Ian Forrester and Eric Morgan de Rivery complimented the EFTA Court on the clarity of its judgments and welcomed the scope of judicial review. University of Luxembourg Professor Alexander Rust analysed the case law of the EFTA Court and of the ECJ with regard to direct taxation. A panel chaired by University of Oslo Professor Giuditta Cordero-Moss which brought together the Chief Justice of Norway, Tore Schei, the President of the Supreme Court of Iceland Markús Sigurbjörnsson, the President of the Liechtenstein Administrative Court Andreas Batliner, and the President of the Administrative Court of Luxembourg Georges Ravarani, discussed the Shakespearian question in a slightly different form: ‘To refer or not to refer’. It became clear that the approach prevailing in Iceland and in Liechtenstein is quite different from the one used in Norway. At the end Chief Justice Schei invited the EFTA Court to a round table with the Supreme Court of Norway on the matter.
For the programme of the 20th Anniversary Conference please click here.