Competence
The Lisbon Treaty provides for a, partly new, division of EU competences in Art. 3-5 TFEU:
- exclusive EU competences - member states have no right to legislate on their own.
- shared competences - member states can legislate as long as the Union has not legislated. When the Union does legislate, EU law has primacy over national law.
- supporting, coordinating and supplementing competences: the EU cannot harmonise laws, but it can adopt legally binding rules all the same.
In areas in which the EU has no clearly defined competence, the competence should remain with the member states according to the principle of conferred powers. This does not mean that the EU cannot interfere. Officials of the Danish Government when asked have not been able to mention a single area of Danish law which cannot be affected in some way by the Lisbon Treaty.
Links
See the reader friendly edition of the EU Constitution with highlights, remarks in the margin, plus a great index to help you move around: http://www.euabc.com/upload/pd......f/draft/rf_constitution_en.pdf
