The Judicial Dialogue between the EFTA Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union
Il dialogo giudiziario tra la Corte EFTA e la Corte di giustizia dell’Unione europea
Le dialogue judiciaire entre la Cour de l’AELE et la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne
The article maps and analyses the judicial dialogue between the EFTA Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union, as it has evolved over the more than three decades since the EU internal marked was extended to the participating EFTA States through the Agreement on the European Economic Area (EEA). As the EFTA Court is tasked with the interpretation of an Agreement over which also the CJEU has jurisdiction and whose provisions for the most part stem from EU law, its position vis-à-vis the CJEU has always been a challenging one. From the very beginning, the CJEU has emphasised the autonomy of the EU legal order and its own role as the authoritative interpreter of EU law. Through the adoption of the CJEU’s methodological approach to EU internal market law and rigorous defence of the homogeneity objective of the EEA Agreement, the EFTA Court has nevertheless succeeded in establishing itself as a partner whose case law is considered relevant by the CJEU. As the number of references to the EFTA Court has fallen markedly since the enlargement of the EU, and thus the CJEU, in the mid-2000s, the Advocates General of the CJEU have emerged as the points of contact between the EFTA Court and the CJEU. The article concludes by suggesting that the CJEU ought to distinguish systematically between questions of EEA law that are essentially questions of EU internal market law and sui generis questions of EEA law in its further development of its approach to case law from the EFTA Court.
