From sneaking to striding: Combatting competence creep and consolidating the EU legislative process

Abstract

This paper argues that the EU legislative process should be used for taking all decisions at European level that matter, banning the various backroads of European decision-making (competence creep) that are currently legal but not legitimate. This is a silver bullet, resolving at once a range of seemingly disparate but intimately connected legitimacy problems across all areas of EU activity, that ultimately result from an incorrectly calibrated state of transnational constitutional democracy at EU level, where certain aspects are over-constitutionalised while others remain fundamentally under-constitutionalised. This is therefore the key transversal issue that the Conference on the Future of Europe and its ensuing changes should address. The paper makes various concrete proposals to this effect, including for a general legislative competence.