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Weatherill, Stephen --- "The competence to harmonise and its limits" [2017] ELECD 268; in Koutrakos, Panos; Snell, Jukka (eds), "Research Handbook on the Law of the EU’s Internal Market" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 82

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Law of the EU’s Internal Market

Editor(s): Koutrakos, Panos; Snell, Jukka

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781783478095

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: The competence to harmonise and its limits

Author(s): Weatherill, Stephen

Number of pages: 20

Abstract/Description:

Free movement law exercises a control over national measures that obstruct inter-State trade, but it is always open to Member States to show justification for practices that hinder such trade. And, in fields such as public health, consumer protection and environmental protection, they have been periodically successful in resisting that deregulatory impetus by showing adequate justification. Legislative harmonisation then takes the strain. The EU is able to put in place common rules at EU level to deal with such regulatory concerns expressed through – justified – national measures. Market integration is advanced by legislative harmonisation because there is no longer diversity among the Member States in regulatory demands attached to goods, persons and services, while, at the same time, the EU becomes the relevant regulator in the field occupied by its legislative choices. So harmonisation supplements free movement law. In combination, they serve as the foundation of the law of the internal market. The virtue of harmonisation is also its vice. The competence to harmonise laws conferred on the EU is flexible and broad in nature, which equips the EU with the legislative agility necessary to pursue the task of improving the functioning of the internal market. At the same time this risks promoting an unbridled capacity to regulate at EU level, which will suppress diversity, spread the EU’s influence into any area of regulatory activity previously touched (in diverse ways) at national level and, in economic terms, provoke the over-regulation of the economy to the detriment of competiveness.