A conversation with Marc van der Woude, President of the General Court

Hello and welcome to another episode of Eulalive's podcast conversation series. I'm Daniel Savmiento, Editor-in-Chief of Eulalive, and I will be your host. In this episode, I had the privilege of sitting with Mark Fundervouter, President of the General Court of the European Union. President Fundervouter has been involved in Eulalde during his entire professional life, since his time as a student in the College of Europe to his work in academia that led to a professorship in the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, but also throughout an extensive time in public and private practice, culminating in his arrival at the helm of the General Court in 2019. During his time as judge and vice president of the General Court, he was a direct witness over the reforms of 2015, which led to the doubling of judges of the court, and in his time as president to his piloted another major reform, the transfer of preliminary references to the General Court, a milestone that was already provided in the knee-streetly, but has taken more than two decades to materialize. In this podcast, we talk about his career, his arrival at the General Court, but also about the reforms now taking place, and how he envisions the future for the jurisdiction he presides. Good morning, Mr. President. Thank you for joining me in this podcast conversation. Good morning. Welcome to the General Court. I would like to start talking about you rather than talking about the General Court, which we will do shortly, but I wanted to ask you about your uprigings as a lawyer, and in particular as an EU lawyer. And your decision to devote your career to EU law. Can you tell us about this decision, and if there was a specific event or a moment that drove you towards the practice of EU law? First, I didn't want to become an lawyer. I wanted to become a historian. It's still the main center of interest for me to read history books. I will not read a law book on the Saturday evening. But I liked the law. I decided to study it because my father said if you study history, you will become a school teacher like I am, so don't do that. So I went to university, and I discovered European law, but also through the prism of history. It's a political project. It has politics, geography, it's law and economics. It's much wider than law alone. You have to discover it. So I found that interesting. It also has, say, something idealistic. It's a piece project. And I always thought, for example, how long will this last? We had the Congress of Vienna, which lasted for 1815 to 1914. Should we look at the European project in the same way or not? Although, all those questions made me very much interested in European law. And then I had the chance of meeting somebody, my professor, Professor Timberman, who was an extra professor. He taught European law in a very open manner with case studies, inviting students to take positions, to have exchanges. One of the other students in the class was Sacha Priham, both where Tupelts of Christian Timberman's. And I owe very much to him to my whole career. So that's how I ended up doing European law. After the university, by the way, then I thought, I want to go on with this. And I went to the center of the university where they had post graduate studies. And the debt time goes no internet. So he had all the leaflets, folders on the big table. And I went through it. And then I fell upon the bridge. And I think that sounds interesting. So I went to Bougie and then I followed a European career. Now you were a referendum at the Court of Justice, which means that you decided to really divorce yourself to EU law after Bougie, I assume. And at that time, that was in the early 1990s, if I'm correct. You were a referendum with several colleagues of yours at the time who later returned like yourself to the Court, Anthony Collins, Sacha Prichal, who just mentioned, Elisna Sharpsson. You were a referendum there as in a Court, which was very different to the Court of Today. And I would like to ask you about the contrast of recollecting about the Court of That Time compared with the Court of Today. I arrived in 1989. So it was still in the '80s, at the moment when the general court was to be set up, that led to a major change because the institution increased in size. So at that time, there were about 50 to 60 referendum there. At the Court of Justice, if you had up the referendum there as of the judges, the advocates general. And then you would have 10 to 15 at the general court. And that was about it. So it was a small community and everybody knew each other. So that's I think the main aspect. But it was a tenesse back which every former referendum tells it was smaller in the past and it is today. And it's good like that. It means that you're not exposed. The European Union expands so that we get more people doing it. So no nostalgia about a lost ideal world. It's how organizations grow and they grow for good cause. Now the situation is completely different. I mean it's a big thing. You have formal rules. You have processes. You have rules to follow. All that was different of rules at the time. For example, if you were to just practical example and not on the Libera for example, it would be distributed physically. Now you go via electronic means by the city president or all those things didn't exist in the past. It was much more. I would say artisanan, I think it's the word I would use to characterize it. So the court was different. It was still a common market court with some additional policies, competition policies, social policy, equal treatment, agricultural policy. And it was primarily focused on market opening. You had the famous Ashtas case or Ahmed Said on the airline sector. You had the Sufina case for the banks. You had all the questions about monopolies, corbaux, RTT, those type of off cases. So that was the main focus of that court press today. European law is everything. You can't think of a legal discipline which has not been effective by European law. So it's much broader and nowadays than it was in the past. And I think also today it's much more technical, especially at the general court than what it was in the past. If you deal with chemicals or you deal with electricity or you deal with pharmaceuticals or those type of issues, that's extremely technical. It's a much more complex than it used to be in the past. Also, I think that's the big difference. There was no case law. You had to make the case law. So you had to come up. Sometimes it was a bit tentative, for example. All the case law which ultimately led to a cake. You see many of those cases. You had some trial and errors before it led to a cake. Nowadays it's basically just an area of the case law in which nothing new will happen. So there again, the difference between the role of the case law at the time. And then I think the judges were different. There were no EU law experts because there was no EU law. So the law had to be made and you had people of a different nature, a different aura. It could be constitutionalists, international lawyers or specialist in economic law, but not necessarily European law. It had to be invented. Of course that led to an aura of those judges which perhaps we have lost a bit today. That's a, we see a more technical profile of the judge than in the past. But that's perhaps an impression. may also be, of course, that in that respect, a bit of nostalgia of times, my gone. That's I don't exclude that. Is it changing the legal system? The judges adapt to the legal system they have for operating? Correct. The legal system has changed so dramatically that the profile of judges inevitably has to change. Yes. But I think it's never that as important to have generalists on board. People with a different focus than only European nor focus, especially at the court of justice, when you enter into this constitutional debate with the constitutional courts, it's good to have your part of constitutional lois on board. Unfortunately, the president of the institution has this background. And then you return from the court back to the Netherlands, also to Belgium, and you started working in academia, but also in practice. Or perhaps the chronology is a bit different. I first started in academia, called it "You're free up as an assistant, University of Leiden, and then I joined DG Comp, or DG4, as it was called at the time, and then there was a segment to the court of justice for three years, as they found out, went back to DG Comp from there to the legal service. And then I became a private practitioner. That conditions why I decided to do that. But again, it was fortuitous that I became a private lawyer. And I think it's an important part of my professional background. I did it for 15 years, and I think those are the forms 10 years where you become very experienced in the law. I think it's important to have lawyers on the bench. For example, you have some legal traditions in Ireland or in the UK where you have to, where the condition to become a judge is that you have bar experience, or that you have been a solicitor or a barrister before. I think it's important because people with that background understand how to set up a case, how to bring a case, how to take raw materials and transform them into an application, which makes sense. Often people who don't have that background don't understand the difficulties of how complex it is to translate what company-ordering individual says into legal arguments, to make the home legally operational. That's a skill in itself. Then I think also private practitioners have a different concept of time. They know that there are deadlines. They also know that it's not possible to produce a perfect product. Sometimes you have a week, and the product you will deliver is a week's product. I think it's also important in an organization. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I see it sometimes with all due respect. That academics, for example, take a good time because they think in terms of perfection and reflection, whereas private practitioners tend to be more action oriented. That's another important element of private practice. Also, the fact that you can take a distance of what you write. You may have clients who come with a specific request. They say, "Okay, I will help that company or that person, but it may well be that you don't really believe in the course." You write something, "Okay, I will do my best to get this done. You are completely subjective." As a private practitioner, you have to be subjective within the limits of decency and deontology rules, of course. But you can distance yourself from what you wrote. It's not necessarily a conviction. I think also important when it comes to, for example, deliberations at a court, is okay, you have an opinion, you have written something, but say the other ones don't follow. So be it. There are all the ways to get consensus. That's another important input of private practitioners. It's also a certain mindset. The belief that companies can produce wealth. They are not only people who are involved in cartels, dumping and receive state aid or do mass dismissals of employees. Sometimes I see it with my colleagues here who don't have this experience in practice that I have read in the negative view on private companies and things. Where is it the source of our wealth? Now this being said, it's important that a court has all sorts of experiences, not only private practitioners, but also people who have been in the administration, academics, and last but not least professional judges. That's I think the. You see that in the way the court operates and how professional judges operate, they have the skill to deliberate and to come to consensus. I think that's. So it's all the groups of various inputs which makes the court work much more than the nationality. That's what I say often to students when they come and visit here, they say it's a lot more nationality which say it is a decisive factor in the approach to a legal problem. It's the professional background of the individual. But do you see that nationality can be a factor sometimes? I quite frankly, I haven't seen it. No, it's basically from the people you have here at the court, they run into the homogenous, whether they come from Zagreb, Dublin, or Helsinki, it doesn't really matter, it's more the professional background. It can be relevant on some kind of issues, for example, there are sensitivities which are different, for example, if you take, for example, transparency, where you will have typically different opinions. But those are a way I would say the exceptions. Most seats the professional background of the person rather than his or her nationality that matters. Now that we're talking about judges more generally, I would like to jump more generally to talk about the general court. And I think there are good reasons to talk about the court that you preside because a few weeks ago, the council and the European Parliament finally approved a very important reform of the statute, going to have a considerable impact in this jurisdiction. You arrived as a judge in 2010 when this court was comprised of one judge per member state. Now the general court is much bigger, if it's doubled in size. This is the result of a reform that took place in 2015 and now we're entering into another reform in 2024. We will talk in more detail about the recent reform that's now coming, but going back to 2015, the 2015 reform received some criticisms. It wasn't a unanimously received initiative at the time. It has been argued that the reform that's coming now in 2024 to a certain extent is the consequence of the 2015 reform and the sum of the problems that the 2015 reform entailed of having an overcrowded court that now needs to have a sufficient docket to produce, to make use of its resources. What would you respond to the critics of the 2015 reform? Because I think that that is a way of also answering to the criticisms of the recent reform. What I would like to start with of 2015 reform first. We are in 2024. So what happened in 2015, I would say, is of limited relevance. Let me first say that I think that the reform on balance was a good thing. It has to say led to significant improvements in the way we deal with cases. First in terms of speed, when I came here, you had an average duration of proceedings which would sometimes three years, four years. I remember in cartel cases it could be five, six years that was completely unacceptable. Now that has disappeared, I think it's now around 16 or 18 months, some time it's longer, it depends a bit on the nature of a given balance, it's between 16 and 18 months, I think that's acceptable as a duration. And the second point I think that's even more important, we have now the resources to carry out in depth control. I don't say that it was not lying there in the past, but the focus in the past before the doubling of the amount of judges was to deal with the volume. Now there's also the focus on going in depth, sometimes we overdo it and we get also criticism of the Court of Justice, but it shows exactly how the need, there was a need for more in-depth control, especially when it comes to fines, to private individuals and things like that. We also do it with more people. In the past it was three judges, even big cases, big cartels, highly sensitive areas, of the law, for example, I remember the French, the French policialist, for example, many judges. Now we would no longer do that, with three judges, we do it with five, or even the grand chamber. And so it increases the authority of the general court, for example, if I can take the example of Artie France, it was a grand chamber judgment, it has not been appealed. We had a grand chamber judgment in Venezuela, not a bill. Now I don't say that it will not be a bill, but at least we put our weight in the quality or the authority of our decisions. And more importantly, that's interesting, you know, as an academic, I remember the editorial in the Commonwealth Market Law Review about the unbearable lightness of judicial control at the general court in competition methods. And now the, I would say the pendulum has perhaps switched to the other side, where you have the commission complaining about the unbearable intensity of judicial control. So somewhere we will depend on someone in the middle, it will find its equilibrium, but there's no longer criticism, as regards to say the fact that we're not doing our job properly. Now I think that's the important thing to put forward, I think it's a success. And it's a success because something needed to be done when I arrived, it was the first year. It was extremely tough, I think I had 70 or 80 cases. Sometimes it even went up to 120 cases as a judge up of the, that was not present. To deal with. So there was a problem which needed to be addressed. Now was the reform the doubling of the amount of judges, the only answer to that problem? No, of course not. The general court had more in mind to have said to follow the root of the Treaty of Nis to provide for specialized courts, particularly for trademarks, there was already a staff court. But it was a political environment in which the member states couldn't agree on the nomination of the judges of that staff court, so that didn't sound very well if you were to create another specialized court who would be the judges in that court. So you had the nomination problem at the staff court at that time. He also had the difficulty in finding the right number of judges and the initial proposal was 12 additional judges, but then which member states? So ultimately it came to a pragmatic solution, simply we abolish the staff court and we integrate the number of judges, I think it was seven, into the 28 I think we were at their time already. So it was not the real doubling was basically restructuring. I think yes, it is a pragmatic solution, it has had positive things, now you can criticize afterwards should have been done differently. It's easy to say that exposed, but I think at the time it was a pragmatic solution to political and a real problem which needed to be addressed. So that's how I look at the reform of 2015 and I think in this court nobody thinks of 2015 anymore, it's more looking ahead to this new reform which is coming. Is it the consequence of the previous reform? I don't know. The fact is that we can have a big more work, it's a given that we can take more work on board and now the court of justice has an issue. So again we have been back in a different scenario, there where we were in 2000, so 10, 2011, the court find itself now under pressure. Not only in dealing with preliminary reference questions, but also with appeals. I think it's important to bear in mind that the reform has two sides, it's not only the transfer of power in terms of preliminary reference cases, but also an extension of the filtering mechanism as it was already provided for in the reform of 2019 when we had the first filtering system set up. So I think it makes perfect sense, we have a problem at the court of justice, there is spare capacity here and the court needs to evolve. And it's interesting to see that I think in the recitals of the legislative reform references make to the constitutional nature of the court of justice that it needs to migrate to that role. And I think it's the first time that in a legislative text this is said, of course the court has already said that in its own case, but it found its way in the legislation and then the state of the tempest, curious, that is that it is considered to be primary law. It's always to say in primary law you could say that the court of justice now has to fulfill this constitutional role. So the court came with this, I think it makes sense, I think everybody accepts that this system should work, of course we will see that something future will tell. But both reforms are basically pragmatic ones, responding to the need. And are they the, say the only solutions where they are additional, of course, but they offer a solution to real problems, I fully, fully in line with this pragmatic approach. Let's talk about the 2020 reform, because now that's really what's on the table at the moment and it's very important reform is a huge change for the EU judicial model. It's true that it's an option that was already in the treaties, in the niece treaty, in 2000 we already had the option of transferring references to the general court, the reality is that it has taken 24 years to actually happen, which is a good sign of how complex the process is and that it's taken a while for the court to adjust as an institution to decide it on this move. In general terms, how is the court going to handle preliminary references once the transfer happens and what's internal changes do you foresee in the short and medium term? First, I think the point of departure or the default option is how the court does it. The idea is that we do it at least as good as the court of justice. That's the idea. The idea is to take over the rules and practices of the court of justice and import them in our system. There aren't adjustments which should be made. You can talk about that because it's a different court. It works differently than the court of justice. The idea is that for the referring judge, it should not make any difference as to whether it is the court of justice or the general court that gives the answer to the question of the referring court. That also explains the Gishe unique. I don't know how you would call that in English, common till or entry point or the the single gate of the Court of Justice. Judd just refers it to that point and then there is a selection made on the basis of the criteria whether it is within the sphere of the competence of the general court or the Court of Justice itself. So that's, I think the point of departure, should not make any difference and the idea of course is that the referring judge gets a better deal. I think that's also how we see it. We will first start with the same deadlines as the Court of Justice but I don't exclude that we will say try to make it go faster because there's also a degree of specialization which we will import. For example now V18 cases which are highly technical are dealt with without any form of specialization at the Court of Justice whereas the knowledge to do with those cases at the general court will be concentrated in two chambers. So that's I think a difference when it comes to technical matters that the technical matters will be dealt with by people who have developed the expertise and that includes the other goods general as well. Also the Advocacy General will in fact the idea is to have two specialized chambers of five judges or six judges because we are 54 and so if you exclude the president, vice president you have 52 judges to allocate. So the idea is to have the six chambers, say the six person chambers, dealing with the preliminary references and in each chamber there will be a judge appointed or elected as an Advocacy General and that person will conclude in the other chamber and say why this complex system. Now the idea is that as long as the case law of the case load allows it these people will not only do preliminary reference work but also direct appears and it was considered to be inappropriate that somebody who sits as a judge also acts as an Advocacy General so there should be a separation between the activities of the Advocacy General and the activities of the same person as a judge hence the fact that they conclude in the chamber where they don't sit as a judge. So I think this concentration is already of knowledge, it is a guarantee both in terms of quality and in terms of speed. Now as regards the quality or the intensity of we will deal with all the cases by default with five judges so the idea that it would go to chambers of three is an exception to the rule so it's five judges so there again I would say that there's more guarantee of say a larger input by five then you will have with three judges. Finally yes of course implementing this system in the general court it's not so easy because we are at the court of justice the cases are allocated by the president to the individual judge that doesn't work like that at the general court we allocate or the president allocates the case to the chamber and then it's the president chamber who allocates the case to the reporting judge and it's always the chamber that basically does the work it's collective exercise where they they do the primary investigation they come to the preliminary report so now we have to adapt that system to the court system where you have this tandem of the judge's rapporteur and the Advocacy General and we have to insert that in our working methods so that's I think it is an innovation but we'll see how it works in practice with conscious of well how will this really work and that's that's a question we ask ourselves now we'll deal with it in two steps so we have a preliminary phase if they may say which starts in October from 2000 October 2034 until September 2035 where we will have an ad hoc chamber of 10 judges plus the vice presidents who will preside that group and so that this expertise will develop then the idea is that these people will also if they're still there in 2025 be the judges that will be appointed in the two specialized chambers so for the moment it will be building up the expertise so we set up training programs which will be activated as soon as we know all these people are and we will know that hopefully once the rules of procedure have been adopted and we mean that it can happen in June so then we'll have to hear the summer holidays to prepare and not only in terms of knowledge of VAT law and exercise duty law but also the particular skill which is required to write preliminary references because that's something different than dealing with a direct appeal let me explain now if you are dealing with a direct appeal you want to dig into depth you go from the abstract to the specific facts whereas when you'd help with the preliminary reference question it's precisely new opposite you have to go from the specific facts to the abstract so it will require change in in in mentality also in drafting methods so that's something we will start during the summer and during this preliminary phase that it will be a mental method of yeah a gradual adjustment of working methods and I think it's good that we have chosen for this transitional period because in the beginning we will not get a tsunami of preliminary reference question they will come in one by one and this allows us to to to learn by doing so that's the the idea of course I can go into details on how we will set up all the rules and how he's all the words but that's basically internal cuisine which is not so interesting but there are very interesting features of the reform which in the future might merit some analysis you're mentioning that the idea is to use the reference of the court which makes perfect sense but it's true that the general court can develop its own practices when dealing with preliminary references and I can think of examples in which the practice of the court of justice might not be ideal it has room for improvement so for example I and this is a complain I hear from national judges to say well the court of justice and the judgment in this case I referred says it's lacking information and the judgment eventually didn't become very useful for the case but why didn't it ask for the information and it's true that the court of justice doesn't request information from national courts very frequently has the tools to do it but I think that for reasons of timing and to avoid delaying the procedure there's certain resistance to do that I can imagine those kinds of practices developing in this court differently and that might actually improve the experience the the user experience looking at from the national and such a perspective in ways that it might be better from the experience in making references that are solved by the court I think the key difference at least I tell you that he's two early days to say something in this respect but I think the difference in culture is this particularly striking when you have the role of the hearing for example at the hearing the court the general court uses the hearing to do the fact-finding to to understand what's going on even if the answers are not always necessary for the solution of the case the judges want to know it what happens to understand the context to understand how a judgment will land in a particular situation what the bride bore the scope of it is I think it's important when it comes to pretty merry references that we keep this tradition of the importance of the hearing to understand from the parties and from the intervening parties what will be the practical consequence of a judgment in a particular case or an answer to the judgment or to understand where the referring judge comes from I think that's in our system part of our tradition to understand to to be curious I would say it's and whereas the court also because of time constraints is less, or I'm not going to say it's not good, but the humans have another function at the court of justice than they have at the general court. Of course, as I said, it's important to understand where the case comes from in the name, about the referring judge really want to know things like that, but we should not be tempted to rule in his or her place. That's why I see the difficulty for us to stay abstract and not to go too much into detail. And that's the main challenge. I think we will face as a court to understand this difference in the approach. Isn't it also a challenge, the fact that you're not a first instance court anymore in the sense that judgments are going to be rendered in principle as the judgment solving that preliminary reference request. The review procedure is there, but that will be for exceptional circumstances. So you are not under the long shadow of the court of justice having the power to strike out a judgment delivered in first instance. Could this be also not opportunity to be more open-minded in the sense that you are delivering on judgment now that it's going to be definitive in most of the occasions, which is something that doesn't happen in direct actions? Could be. I think yes, that's what I would approach differently. I think the responsibility increases for the general court. And now we can always say, okay, they're not completely sure or if it's a pfri take it. In case that there are various options. You go for one option and then you always think, okay, there is the possibility of a pf. Now that lecture we no longer exists. If you're fair to deal with the preliminary reference case, because as you say, you have to give the final answer. You must also make sure that what one chamber says is accepted by the other. An interesting thing, by the way, in this reform is also the fact that there is an intermediate chamber, which allows, say, the general court to merge the decision-making panels and to come to ensure uniformity in particular, preliminary reference proceedings. But also, in direct affairs, this intermediate formation is not only for the preliminary reference appeals, but also for the direct appeals. And in particular, in the areas where we have the final say in practice, and the list, which is mentioned in the legislative proposal, is a long one. It's, I don't know exactly how it will work out, but for example, you have also issues dealing with the single resolution board. Those can be very important decisions, indeed, financial supervision, authorities, also regulatory bodies. There again, we will have, say, our own responsibility. I think the main thrust of the reform or the main impact will be that the general court must change it, might say, and say, we bear in deep the, say, that we have the final responsibility here in those matters, which also implies that we must work more as a group. It used, for example, in 2010 or in early 2000, we would work in small decision making units of free judges. Now, we see the tendency that, for example, the implementation of the proposal is five judges, the intermediate formation. And even the grand chamber could be used in exceptional cases, whereas it's, of course, not the idea to include non-specialists in field, but it's not excluded that we would use one day, that too. Now, I think that's, for me, that's the main change in prism. No longer, say, a first instance port, as it was in the part, but indeed, a general court with the final response of being in certain areas of the law. And also, the novelty of specialization, which has been, I know that in certain quarters, certain areas of law, it has been a claim has been made. We want a specialized port in Luxeburg on matters of composition, matters of direct taxation, on matters of private international law. It's one of the traditional claims of the experts in certain fields that think that the case law of court justice is too generalist. So now, for the first time, we are going to have a specialized, not court, but a specialized group of judges who are going to be working very, very, I wouldn't say exclusively, but going to be working very, very closely in certain areas of the law. So that, that first step of specialization, I think it's also an important development in the sense that it can open a way for even further future specializations, which was a bit of the, the opposite approach to how this court operated as a generalist court. Specialization is a complex issue because the judges here come to the general court. So they are generalists. That's the point of departure. The second thing is that they have ready to be short term. When you speak about specialization in national courts, you do that throughout your career and you do that, right? Somebody had the Commission's Neal Service. You go to one team, for example, of competition team. You do that for six years and then you move on to another team and so on. That's not possible at our work or so. There are external constraints which make it difficult for us to specialize at the short term of the mandate and the generalist. Approach and it's also the profile which is in the drinking. This being said, we move towards specialization by proving knowledge. We did that for trademarks, we did that for staff cases, we do it also for training of your references, but we decided not to sub-specialize. And we could have said, for example, on the two chambers that deal with printing your reference questions that there would be one, the English indirect taxation and the other one with all other issues, especially pleasant little rights and things find good. Now we didn't do that, so we think it's important also that this generalist approach remains because it's so dangerous that you have a specialization has also a price. It could be a drift apart of all the specialized areas of law. I think it's important to keep it all together, so it's a balance to be struck. I think we more or less succeed, for example, when there is a new area of law, for example, if there's a new type of restricted measures, we have seen in 2022 and fortunately with the aggression against your brain, we concentrated the cases in one chamber, so that that chamber could develop consistent body of case law. And once that is done, all the cases could be dealt with by the other judges. So the specialization is also a question of time and we use the concept of related cases to create that body of consistent case law. And once that is done, everybody has to say the possibility to work one day on every area of the law. So it's a constrained specialization. It's a balance. It's a balance to be struck because it's also the fact that the Treaty of Nice provided another system for specialized courts. It would be a bit strange, I would say, to integrate an idea which was abandoned, which say the specialized courts into a court, which is called the general court. The system we have chosen is not exactly the system which Article 256 of the Treaty provides for. That's how it's said. So there is everybody understands here the need for specialization. But it is a matter of degree and the question there again is how to find the right dosage. Now that we're speaking about this specialization, I'd like to talk about the advocate general because that is another example of a specialization in the case of an advocate general. We have generalist advocates general of the court of justice. Now we're going to have an advocate general who are not only judges, but they're also going to be constrained to certain areas of the. This is quite a novelty. And I would bet that the kind of advocate general that will develop in the general court will. because of these features, it will be a bit different from the advocate general at the court of justice. How are you envisaging the functioning of the advocates general role? How is it going to work once the reform steps in? Of course, I can give an easy answer. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. But my take on this is that the advocate general must be there to have, say, to accompany the reporting judge and the decision-making panel, as I said, be operational in a collegiate way, as a safeguard to have an additional pair of eyes. The advocate general doesn't have as a mission to complete in every case. I think that's not the idea. Precisely the idea of the reform was that this is already a so-called jurisprudence who had been established in the solid body of the case law, well established. So why would there be a need to conclude in every case? So I think that's important that the advocates general and decision-making panels show self-restraint in conclusion. I think it's the role of the advocate general in my perception. He is a procedural worker, to accompany, to give when need be an independent opinion. Now, when a person exercising the role of an advocate general concludes, it will be very technical, because mostly be in technical areas like in the direct taxation of persons' arise or emission rights and things like that. So you will have indeed a different type of opinion than you will have the Court of Justice. That will be probably very technical. You can imagine there's a new question coming up in the field covered by the directives, of course, because if it's horizontally, it has to stay at the Court of Justice. But a new technical question comes up there, I think the advocate general can play a role. I think that person will also be better placed to engage, or to follow the literature to what happens, will probably be better informed with all due respect. Well, the colleagues at the Court of Justice, which have a horizontal function, here you would have a vertical function of the advocate general, because he's supposed to dig deep and to inform the decision-making panel. About the consequences of going in one way or another in answering the preliminary reference request. So I think it would indeed be different. Well, as I said, once in a discussion with Goulinert's. The Court of Justice is a horizontal court. It deals with, to say, the transversal effects in all areas of the law. Whereas we are a vertical court. We have specific knowledge, we belong to various specialized groups. We have judges, which have a trained mark focus, those have a focus in competition law. We have also judges who know everything about restrictive measures. And we also will develop a group of judges, an advocate general, which would be part of the professional groups of V18 lawyers, or I don't know what else she could have in liable lawyers. That's where the added value lies of the advocate general. I think the ethnicity of the opinion. Well, future will tell whether that is a right forecast. And if we look at the reform from a broader perspective, we kind of step back and not just look at the new reform that's coming up, the reality is that there are other reforms taking place, which have started not too long ago, which are underway. So for example, you've already made a reference to the filtering mechanism of appeals or the Court of Justice, which to a certain extent is turning the general court into a more of a second and lost instance court. There has been a specialization already by the attribution cases to certain chambers, in the case of trademarks and staff cases you mentioned that also beforehand, the increasing intensity of control, this pendulum that is moving and trying to find where it's going to set, the fact that there is an increase of intensity of control. These are all movements happening at the same time that the transfer of references is going to happen. So the reality is that the general court is changing quite a lot, not just through statute reforms. It's this undertaking, a process of reform. Could you elaborate on the broader picture of all these reforms, on the direction in which the general court is heading into, if we look at this from this broader perspective? I think there are two main forces in our internal changes. The first one is efficiency. There is since 2015 and older judges who came, are very much aware of the need to deliver. You mentioned that there has been criticism on the reform and that there are too many judges and things like that. There is this idea we have to deliver. That's something of which all my colleagues are aware of. For example, we have statistical exercise. And I never thought that statistics would have such an impact. The idea, oh no, we can't have any backlogs because we've got this reform and any backlog is to be banned. Regardless of the type of the case, so sometimes it goes too far, this is a dissubcession with statistics. So the idea that we must deliver in terms of speed, in terms of intensity of control. I think those are the main issues. Now we also are aware of the fact that sometimes one case is not another. And sometimes statistics can have perverse effects. So when it comes to big cases, we call them the triggons of the very large cases. The idea is that to lift them out and give them special treatment. And no longer see them as, say, run of the male case, but as something which is a project, which has its own deadlines, its own dynamics and things like that. That's, I think, one major change also to see that when we have those big cases, a p-thoppelion, then they eat it. The digital sector or could only be the energy sector. If we have one of those monsters that we treat it and give it specific treatment, concern, a similar concern deals with groups of cases. When you have a state aid decision which has, which concerns the regime, which affects many companies. That's also a huge project. We have seen it with the corona aid in the airline sector. For example, a bank resolution case. That's again something where you have many, many cases. So we have been thinking on how to do this more efficiently. So we decided as a group that suspension is perhaps not a good idea. Because that is frustrating for those who are in the situation of hanging a suspended case. And then when the pilot goes, case goes on the peel, we have cross interventions. On the peel, the case comes back and it leads to an enormous spaghetti of interventions, direct appeals and things like that before our court. So as we will know, suspension, but nevertheless, suspension is a tool there. We can deal with every case. But there's a change in mindset in pushing cases ahead, defining in a group of cases which the pilot cases are, give them priority treatment and a formation of five, for example, and the rescue follow with formations of three. Our rules of procedure have changed also in that respect. In order to deal with the confidentiality issues which we always face, we now have common hearings, which implies that when you have a common hearing parties don't have access to each other's files. So that saves us a lot of confidentiality issues. So there again, we have been focusing on efficiency of this typical thing of the general court, these groups of cases. So those are the two components I would say and the more of this efficiency thing, the awareness of being efficient, also the awareness that cases can be different than that you will have to give special treatment to the big cases or to groups of cases. That's one group of considerations. And the other one I already mentioned is this increased responsibility as a group. And that we must deal with certain illegal issues in a final way, in terms of the func outlaw. the ads, which are specialized in trademarks that something where we have ultimately a factor of final say. So there is this responsibility for the change of information keeping each other informed. So there is this change in approach when I came here, for example, in 2010, sharing the preliminary report was the exception rather than rule. Now all these reports are online. So that's an enormous paradigm shift. Also, for example, now the idea is that people have similar problems that the vice president interferes. The new guys should talk because there are similar problems in your chambers. We use sometimes, for example, the grand chamber to solve possible pleasures of case, whereas in the past people would go their own way and say, okay, there's the court of justice who will help us deal with that, the responsibility for the consistency of the case, or it's with the court of justice. That is also something which has changed considerably over time. And that's still a process, what might do my best, to make that process going, which is not always obvious because you may hit upon various phoenix. When you take, for example, the culture of a councilor state in an evidence that's a very gregarious concept of the jurisdiction. The same thing, the impressions I have for my visits, the French councilor states, also that it is a collective approach to the case law, whereas for example, in other legal traditions, particularly Germany, for example, Austria, the idea of the legal judge, the Gazette-City-Harrichter, is very much developed. So we have to find a system which suits us all. And that's a culture change which, credit, you need takes place. So now is the last question. In this context, we are in now, in which there are many moving objects around. The court of justice is turning more and more into a constitutional court, transferring references on technical matters to the general court, limiting the number of appeals. Now we have these appellate bodies in the agencies, which to certain extent are getting this recognition in the statute that they are semi-jurisdictions, sufficiently robust to make of you a lost instance court in the general court. And then we have the general court taking this broader collective responsibility approach to those cases that you have just mentioned, assuming preliminary references, there are many moving objects. Now with all of these elements at play, how do you see the general court? And I will also say the court of justice, the two courts. How do you see the two courts, the institution, on the whole in 20, 30th of thine? It's crystal ballgated, of course. I think that as a basic idea, we should have a judicial system that meets the needs of the union. That's blunt and general statement and I think everybody will agree with that. But I think it's important because the judicial system should be a function of what the union is doing. So if the union evolves, the judicial system has to evolve. Now the question, how will the union evolve? That's even a bigger question. But I could say that, going back for example to 2000, would you have thought that we would have resisted banking crisis, corona crisis, or refugee crisis, or war with Ukraine? The system much much more robust than pessimists tend to believe. I think so. We should have a system which adapts to the needs of the union itself. I think there is still sufficient flexibility in the system we have. So system as it exists, those two reforms will still give, say, a possibility of adjustment. But they are where, or they were pragmatic at-hoc solutions to specific problems. They could last but will they be an answer in a union of 25 members that I don't know? Can we have 70 judges at the journal court? Or if that's not enough, other than 40? If this model are the long term sustainable, is the transfer of preliminary reference competence? It now happens with the just the default. Can it be duplicated? It's hard to say because the criteria which the court used to do, this operation, are hard to duplicate, finding standard-known practices which are not interacting with the powers of the court when it comes to the appeal rights. That was one of the reasons not to include, for example, the traditional areas as competitionable and that's in staff cases in the perimeter or in the scope of the reform because obviously there are cases which are being dealt with on the appeal and you can't have a lower call ruling on uniformity. So the system, this legislative proposal is hard to duplicate. So we will at a certain moment, either when that moment occurs because the system now is still flexible and 30 days. But on the little term, I think there will be a need for a vision. You can go on like this and then the needs of the union may evolve from example when it comes to partial membership. I'll be going to have with the next 3D changes in Europe, Pagil, Mietri, Variabra and does that, how does that interact with the needs for judicial control? So it is too soon to say, how it will look like the Fagus would be to say more, it's probably something similar as it is today because if we go back 20 years ago, this is something we could have imagined article 256 was in the Vietnamese. So I, Fagus is to say in 20 years, it will be system similar to this. However, if there are big geopolitical changes with increased membership or varying degrees of membership, something else has to be found out. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can read much more about EU law in a website and you can also subscribe to follow all our contents at www.eulawlive.com. [BLANK_AUDIO]