Evaluación federal del sistema de competencias de la Unión Europea: la interpretación de las políticas de apoyo y complemento

Abstract

Ever since the European integration process was started, a global space where public power is shared by the EU and the Member States has been built. Both, the Union and the States, act within their scopes of powers on subject matters either allocated to the EU or kept by the States. As an explanatory theory of integration, functionalism has allowed an extensive interpretation of Community competences, disregarding the limits set by the EC Treaty in its conferral clauses. There is a group of competences of the Union described as supplementary or complementary to those of the Member States’, which is a good referent to analyse the amplificatory effects of functionalism, as well as to show how functionalism also influences federal principles, such as primacy and subsidiarity, making them unable to correct those effects. Both principles, notwithstanding, could offer a different balance just in case a federal hermeneutics, which should be specifically thought for the EU, were applied to the interpretation of competences, instead of making use of functionalism as hermeneutics.