ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the key constitutional principles constraining European Union (EU) powers. It attempts to systematise the constraints that EU law poses to the emergence of the EU's non-communicable disease ('NCD') prevention and control policy in order to highlight the importance of designing litigation-proof strategies. In particular, EU health prevention policies have historically been based on the competence to establish and regulate a European internal market. The EU's involvement in NCD prevention is relatively recent. While some measures aimed at regulating lifestyle choices vis-a-vis tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food were adopted in the early days of the European Community, these measures were not intended to promote systematically healthy lifestyles: they were incremental and, as such, only by-products of the internal market. Under the suitability limb of the proportionality test, it is necessary to determine whether a given NCD prevention intervention is capable of attaining its internal market and public health objectives.
