Fiscal Federalism in the European Union: Taking Stock and Looking Forward

Workshop Conveners:
Dr Alicia Hinarejos (Cambridge) and Professor Robert Schütze (Durham).

This event is kindly supported by the Centre for European Legal Studies, the Durham European Law Institute, and the European Research Council.

The European Union is seen often as a legislative giant on clay feet, and many would argue that one of the reasons for this feebleness is the lack of a proper fiscal capacity at the Union level. The EU budget still consists predominantly of Member State contributions, and only a small amount relates to direct contributions raised by customs duties on goods from third countries and VAT. The fiscal sovereignty of the Member States continues to be one of the cornerstones of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the internal market and the Union more generally. In the long term, the current state of affairs may not be sustainable, especially in light of the need to ensure the macroeconomic stability of the euro area and the financial imbalances in the Union as a whole, with increasing calls to transfer some‘re-distributional’ tasks to the European level. While progress towards a fiscal union, perhaps as one of the future elements of a ‘genuine’ and more stable EMU, remains deeply problematic, it is increasingly regarded as necessary or desirable.
 
This debate needs to be placed against the background of the current state of fiscal federalism or distribution of fiscal powers between the Member States and the Union. This workshop hopes to provide a much-needed overview and critique of the current state of affairs in this area, as well as an analysis of the problematic of, and proposals for, future developments.

A copy of the programme can be found below:

• Workshop programme

If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Mrs Felicity Eves-Rey (fre20@cam.ac.uk) for catering purposes.