Towards an Ever Clearer Division of Authority between the European Union and the Member States?
Ton van den Brink, Michiel Luchtman, Miroslava Scholten (eds.), Sovereignty in the Shared Legal Order of the EU. Core Values of Regulation and Enforcement, Antwerpen: Intersentia 2015
32 Pages Posted: 14 Mar 2016
Date Written: November 1, 2015
Abstract
Sovereignty in the European Union is focused mainly on the division of authority between the EU and the Member States. In the EU's constitutional system, the principle of conferred powers and of subsidiarity determine this division and have, thus, received extensive scholarly attention. However, this division of authority is equally determined by level and type of national discretion left to the Member States in concrete EU legislation. This book chapter distinguishes different types of national policy discretion: minimum harmonization; ‘scope discretion’ (national power to decide on the scope of application of EU legislation); enforcement discretion; ‘elaboration discretion’ (the power to further specify the norms of EU legislation) and ‘balancing discretion’ (the power to balance competing public interests or policy objectives).
Keywords: Sovereignty, Subsidiarity, Better regulation, Better law making, Conferred powers, national discretion
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