Subsidiarity meaning

P.m. and Others (request for preliminary ruling) C-264/18 What are the practical implications of this case? Under the PCR 2015, a wide range of legal services let by public bodies fall within the ‘light‑touch’ regime in Chapter 3. As a result, awarding those contracts is governed by less burdensome requirements than those that apply to most other service procurements under the PCR 2015. Yet a narrower set of legal services—chiefly arbitration and conciliation work, together with representation in certain legal proceedings (and legal advice connected to such proceedings)—are carved out altogether from the procurement rules by regulation 10 of the PCR 2015. The dispute stems from a Belgian challenge to the exclusion of the relevant legal services under the Belgian counterpart to regulation 10. The applicants contended that excluding those services conflicted with the freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services in the TFEU, and also offended the EU principles of subsidiarity and equal treatment. Had the Court of Justice endorsed the applicants’ stance, one outcome...

The Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform On 15 February 2024, the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, in a report, backed moves to simplify EU tax systems but insisted such initiatives must yield advantages that exceed any costs and added complexity. In its recommendation, the committee stated that Ireland's position remains that direct taxation is a competence of EU member states under the treaties, and that tax harmonisation runs counter to this tenet. The committee sent its recommendation to houses of the Irish parliament—the Dáil and the Seanad—asking them to submit to the European Commission a protest, termed a reasoned opinion. A parliamentary press officer said houses supported the recommendation without debate as advised by committee...

Introduction to the EU legal system The EU legal order is sui generis—unmatched by any other legal system, even if it incorporates elements from many. To grasp its operation, resist folding it into a national template (or measuring it against one) and watch how it behaves from multiple perspectives. From the outset, the EU (then the EEC) was meant to evolve into more than a mere economic community, hence the founding Member States consented to cede slices of sovereignty to newly created 'supranational' institutions. Supranational, as the term suggests, describes authority set above a national framework. The label marks the contrast with intergovernmental arrangements, where choices are made by consensus and remain tied to the interests of national governments. Once inside the EU, Member States can no longer enact, on their own, laws within fields allocated by the EU Treaties, ie the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), and by their predecessors, to the EU institutions, that competence being...

This Practice Note offers a primer on EU law. It is written for lawyers who are new to, or lack familiarity with, EU law, especially trainee solicitors. It outlines the institutions, the institutional architecture, core principles, and mechanisms for enforcing EU law, with signposts to the pertinent provisions in EU legal sources. The focus of this Practice Note is to deliver a high-level overview of EU law. Detailed treatment of substantive areas of EU law falls outside the scope of this document. For a summary of the EU Law module, see Practice Note: EU Law-new starter guide. EU institutional framework The EU is a supranational polity. It is not a state, nor a federation like the United States, nor merely an intergovernmental forum such as the United Nations. It is truly distinctive. Its design fits no classical legal category and its effectiveness stems from the unconventional manner in which it operates. The states forming the EU, its ‘Member States’, remain sovereign and independent, yet they pool sovereignty to...

The first iteration of this note was prepared by the late Professor Alexander Türk. The limits of EU competences The scope of EU competences is defined by the principle of conferral (also called the principle of attributed powers). This principle safeguards against the Union stretching its authority beyond what the Treaties grant. As set out in Article 5(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the Union acts solely within competences bestowed on it by the Member States to achieve the Treaties’ objectives, while competences not granted to the EU remain with the Member States. A further facet of conferral concerns the division of competences among the EU institutions. Article 13(2) TEU provides that each institution operates only within the powers the Treaties confer upon it. The fact that the EU holds the capacity to intervene in a given field does not confer general law‑making power on its institutions. They may act only to the extent that specific powers have been attributed to them...