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Article 2 TFEU concerns the categorisation of competences (powers) of the EU. The exact powers in each category are defined in later articles. The text of Article 2 is taken directly from the EU Constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. It clarifies that only the EU may legislate in areas that are deemed ‘exclusive competences’ of the EU, and gives the EU carte blanche authority to legislate at any time in the future in the areas of ‘shared competence’ (which are therefore really powers that are only shared in time with member-states). These two areas include almost all the significant powers of government with some miscellaneous policy areas being included in the category of ‘supporting competences’.
The long-term effect is that as the EU builds up a body of law in areas of shared competence the supremacy of this law nullifies national law by a process of ‘federal pre-emption’. The result is that shared competence will resemble an ‘exclusive competence’ more closely over time as the EU ‘aquis’ (body of superior law) builds up in these areas all the while squeezing out national law. This is how the boa-constrictor of the EU law-making system suffocates the law-making powers of national parliaments and the votes of those who elect them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preemption_(law))
Note that there is some new text ("The Member States shall again exercise their competence to the extent that the Union has decided to cease exercising its competence.") that seems to hold out the prospect of the body of EU law decreasing. This in practice never occurs because it would require that the EU Commission makes a legislative proposal to repeal an EU law, which runs contrary to its bureaucratic self-interest in 'more Europe'. Like the Stormont parliament which in 50 years only once approved a measure (on wildlife) introduced by the Catholic minority, the EU Commission has only once in 50 years proposed that an existing EU law be repealed and that in the trivial area of vegetable shapes which had become an embarrassment to it.
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Article 2 TFEU
1. When the Treaties confer on the Union exclusive competence in a specific area, only the Union may legislate and adopt legally binding acts, the Member States being able to do so themselves only ifso empowered by the Union or for the implementation of Union acts.
2. When the Treaties confer on the Union a competence shared with the Member States in a specific area, the Union and the Member States may legislate and adopt legally binding acts in that area. The Member States shall exercise their competence to the extent that the Union has not exercised its competence. The Member States shall again exercise their competence to the extent that the Union has decided to cease exercising its competence.
3. The Member States shall coordinate their economic and employment policies within arrangements as determined by this Treaty, which the Union shall have competence to provide.
4. The Union shall have competence, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty on European Union, to define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy.
5. In certain areas and under the conditions laid down in the Treaties, the Union shall have competence to carry out actions to support, coordinate or supplement the actions of the Member States, without thereby superseding their competence in these areas.
Legally binding acts of the Union adopted on the basis of the provisions of the Treaties relating to these areas shall not entail harmonisation of Member States' laws or regulations.
6. The scope of and arrangements for exercising the Union's competences shall be determined by the provisions of the Treaties relating to each area.
Originally Posted by D.Harry
