External members EBA and petition for review cases

Key points

• If a petition for review is forwarded to a five-member panel, the panel nowadays most often includes an external legally qualified member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal (usually a national judge).
• I did not check how long this has been the case already.
• The possibility is laid down in Art. 7(2) Business Distribution Scheme in conjunction with Art. 6(5) thereof.
• For instance, in case R 11/23, F. Molina López (judge in the Barcelona court); in case R 16/23, H. Deichfuß (Judge at the German Federal Court, BGH); R 18/23: J. Karttunen (Market Court Helsinki); R 5/24: Y. Rüedi (Judge of the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland); R 23/24: A. Sabol (Prague Court, it seems). 
• The participation of the external members of the EBA in these cases seems very valuable, in line with Amartya Sen's thoughts on 'open impartiality' in his book The Idea of Justice. I added some quotes from the work of Sen after the jump. 
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• To cite Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, 2009:
•  "Adam Smith was also concerned with the need to broaden the discussion to avoid local parochialism of values, which might have the effect of ignoring some pertinent arguments, unfamiliar in a particular culture. Since the invoking of public discussion can take a counter-factual form (‘what would an impartial spectator from a distance say about that?’), one of Smith’s major methodological concerns is the need to invoke a wide variety of viewpoints and outlooks based on diverse experiences from far and near, rather than remaining contented with encounters – actual or counterfactual – with others living in the same cultural and social milieu, and with the same kind of experiences, prejudices and convictions about what is reasonable and what is not, and even beliefs about what is feasible and what is not. Adam Smith’s insistence that we must inter alia view our sentiments from ‘a certain distance from us’ is motivated by the object of scrutinizing not only the influence of vested interest, but also the impact of entrenched tradition and custom" (Page 45)
• "The point here is not that voices and views elsewhere have to be taken into account just because they exist – they may be there but entirely uncompelling and irrelevant – but that objectivity demands serious scrutiny and taking note of different viewpoints from elsewhere, reflecting the influence of other empirical experiences. A different viewpoint poses a question, and even if in many cases the question may merit dismissal after adequate consideration, that need not always be the case. If we live in a local world of fixed beliefs and specific practices, parochialism may be an unrecognized and unquestioned result (...). Considering the views of others and the reasoning behind them can be an effective way of determining what objectivity demands" (page 130)
• " To listen to distant voices, which is part of Adam Smith’s exercise of invoking the ‘impartial spectator’, does not require us to be respectful of every argument that may come from abroad. Willingness to consider an argument proposed elsewhere is very far from a predisposition to accept all such proposals. We may reject a great many of the proposed arguments – sometimes even all of them – and yet there would remain particular cases of reasoning that could make us reconsider our own understandings and views, linked with the experiences and conventions entrenched in a country, or in a culture. Arguments that may first appear to be ‘outlandish’ (especially when they do actually come, initially, from other lands) may help to enrich our thinking if we try to engage with the reasoning behind these locally atypical contentions." (page 407)
• See also this article by B. Elmore explaining the concept of 'open impartiality' in this book of Sen.