11 February 2018

Bloomberg: If Brexit means Brexit, little-known court offers non-ECJ option

Carl Baudenbacher, the departing president of the EFTA court, said the U.K. could keep some of the EU’s benefits without losing national sovereignty by “docking” at his own institution after turning its back on the EU’s Court of Justice.

 In essence, this would mean using the EFTA tribunal as an arbiter for disputes under whatever trade pact the U.K. and EU agree upon.

Baudenbacher said it would allow the U.K. to free itself from the powers of the EU’s top court and instead send a judge to the smaller Luxembourg-based EFTA tribunal, used by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, which operate their own trade bloc with access to the EU market. How it would work in reality would need to be hashed out in the Brexit negotiations, he said.

While the U.K. has rejected being part of EFTA as a way to maintain access to the single market and prefers to negotiate a bespoke deal, the country would need a place to thrash out legal issues. The idea of docking would mean Britain would join EFTA’s court and its supervisory authority, which could have the power to rule on any trade disputes between the U.K. and the EU after Brexit.

“I was always convinced there was room for two structures in Europe,” Baudenbacher, 70, said at an event organized by University College London in Britain’s capital on Wednesday. There are “those who want to go for political integration and those who want to stick to economic integration and leave the rest to international treaties.”

Swiss-Tested

“Most of the models being discussed in the U.K. now have been tested by the Swiss” and choosing EFTA’s institutions “would in my view be an option,” said Baudenbacher, a Swiss national. Docking is a real possibility for the U.K. and one that the Brussels-based European Commission is aware of too, he said. [...]

Full article on Bloomberg

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