EU Fiscal Federalism Past, Present, Future

Fiscal federalism refers to the division of fiscal powers — powers to tax and spend — between different levels of government. The European Union (EU) is often seen as a legislative giant on clay feet, and one of the principal reasons for this feebleness is the lack of a significant fiscal capacity at the Union level.

EU Fiscal Federalism: Past, Present, Future explores ten aspects of the EU's fiscal constitution relating both to the fiscal limits it imposes on Member States and the evolution of its own fiscal policy. Bringing together an international and distinguished group of scholars, this volume analyses the different legal dimensions of fiscal federalism within the EU, from the various aspects of the single market (free movement, banking union, state aid, tax harmonization) to the EU's budget and Economic and Monetary Union. The essays provide a fascinating overview of the topic as well as a detailed analysis of where EU fiscal federalism stands today and how it might develop in the future. Sweeping and thorough, EU Fiscal Federalism will appeal to academics and students of European Union law as well as to European policymakers.

Alicia Hinarejos, Professor of European and Global Law, McGill University,Robert Schütze, Professor of European and Global Law, Durham University and LUISS

Alicia Hinarejos is Full Professor at McGill University's Faculty of Law. Before joining McGill in 2021, she was a Reader in European Union Law and Director of the Centre for European Legal Studies at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. Professor Hinarejos's main areas of research are EU law and comparative public law. In recent years, her work has focused on the evolution of the EU's Economic and Monetary Union and its consequences for the EU's constitutional order. She is joint Editor of the European Law Review.

Robert Schütze is Professor of European and Global Law at Durham University and LUISS (Rome). He is a permanent Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and co-founded the Global Policy Institute with the political scientist Professor David Held. He is a constitutional scholar with a particular expertise in the law of the European Union and comparative federalism. He is joint editor of the Yearbook of European Law and the Oxford European Union library.

Introduction, Alicia Hinarejos and Robert Schütze
Part I. The Internal Market of the Union
1. Fiscal Barriers in the Internal Market, Robert Schütze
2. Tax Powers and the EU State Aid Regime, Francesco de Cecco
3. The Harmonisation of Indirect Taxes, Edoardo Traversa and Elena Masseglia
4. The Harmonisation of Direct Taxes, Christiana Panayi
5. The Banking Union: From the Past to the Future, Kern Alexander
Part II. The Fiscal Policy of the Union
6. EU Fiscal Coordination: Past and Present, Antonio Estella
7. Never Waste a Good Crisis: On the Emergent EU Fiscal Capacity, Fabian Amtenbrink and Menelaos Markakis
8. EU Borrowing and Safe Assets, Michael Waibel and Sebastian Grund
9. EU Budget and Spending Powers, Cristina Fasone
10. Fiscal Union by Other Means? The ECB and the Courts, Alicia Hinarejos
Epilogue: Democratizing Fiscal Europe, Thomas Piketty and Antoine Vauchez