ABSTRACT
There is a school of thought that no opportunity should be missed of moving the Community caravan forward, if necessary by night marches . . . there was a time when it would have been considered impolite in Community circles to talk about drawing lines at all. That has changed; and I believe the change is healthy, and evidence of the growing maturity of the order. 1
This comment from a leading EU law academic expresses two important points about the competences of the EU: (1) there has always been ambiguity about defi ning the limits of EU competence and (2) defi ning these limits has become more of a concern of Member States in more recent years. The main reason it has been diffi cult to defi ne the limits of EU competence is because the term ‘common market’ (now called the ‘internal market’) and its associated principles of freedom of movement and undistorted competition (or freedom of competition) – this is what made up the European Communities from the beginning – can be interpreted in a very broad way.
