ABSTRACT
Poverty and social exclusion and, more generally, the objective to become a social market economy are values and aims well-embedded in the EU constitution. This is visible in a number of provisions in the Treaties such as Articles 2 and 3 TEU or Articles 9 and 151 TFEU. The EU and Member States have the mandate to steer action towards attaining these objectives, for which the Union is equipped with a number of (social) competencies. This chapter analyses the content and value of these provisions and studies a number of different powers that the Union could use to contribute to the policy objective of combating poverty and social exclusion. To this end, the chapter first analyses poverty and social exclusion as values and objectives of the Union, then the principles of conferral, subsidiarity or proportionality as mediating principles between shared competencies and the exercise of these and, lastly, a number of explicit and general competences of the EU.
