When the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was founded 60 years ago, the contracting parties established a dispute settlement procedure that sought to strike a balance between the need to supervise compliance with the EFTA Convention and the need to respect the sovereignty of the member states. The procedure of Article 31 empowered the EFTA Council to hear interstate complaints, establish examining committees, issue recommendations, and authorize retaliation. This article investigates the successes and failures of this mechanism on the basis of historical documents from the EFTA archives. It provides an overview of the complaints that were brought under Article 31 and analyses how the Council exercised its functions in dealing with these cases. The article evaluates why the complaints procedure quickly fell into disuse, finding that it failed to provide a real alternative to ordinary discussions in the Council. The article argues that lessons can be drawn from this understudied chapter of European integration, concluding that systems of dispute settlement in international economic law should avoid fusing diplomatic and judicial elements if this might preclude an independent evaluation of the legal questions raised in the context of a concrete dispute.

中文翻译：

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解决州际贸易争端：欧洲自由贸易联盟投诉程序的经验教训

60 年前欧洲自由贸易联盟 (EFTA) 成立时，缔约方建立了争端解决程序，力求在监督遵守 EFTA 公约的需要和尊重成员国主权的需要之间取得平衡. 第 31 条的程序授权 EFTA 理事会听取州际投诉、建立审查委员会、发布建议和授权报复。本文根据 EFTA 档案中的历史文件调查了该机制的成功和失败。它概述了根据第 31 条提出的投诉，并分析了理事会在处理这些案件时如何行使其职能。这篇文章评估了为什么投诉程序很快就被废弃了，发现它未能为安理会的普通讨论提供真正的替代方案。文章认为，可以从欧洲一体化这一未被充分研究的章节中汲取教训，并得出结论认为，国际经济法中的争端解决体系应避免融合外交和司法要素，如果这可能会妨碍对在欧洲一体化背景下提出的法律问题进行独立评估的话。具体争议。