Title:
The Invisible Correlation Between the Harmonization, Coordination and Taxation Policies of the European Union

Authors:
Magdalena Katz*, Germany

Abstract:

The European Union must act – according to the principle of conferral – only in the policy areas, that the Contracting Parties anchored in the Treaties. Principle of conferral, laid down in Article 5 of the Treaty on European Union, constitutes one of fundamental principles of the EU law. In the light of this principle, the EU acts only within the limits of the competences that States have conferred upon this organization in the treaties. These competences are defined in Articles 2–6 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. In general, it means, that competences not conferred on the EU by the treaties remain by the national States.

However, the European Court of Justice interprets the EU law and – sometimes – it extends the competencies transferred. It all happens for the sake of free movement of goods, internal market. This extensive interpretation never happens in the policy areas of social policy, European Social Charter (1961) and the Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers (1989).

This may astonish, since the free movement of workers constitutes one of fundamental principles of the European Union.

Can one understand and interpret the rights of workers without their social rights? This is the question the present paper is going to examine.

Further question is the activism of the European Court of Justice in the area of tax policy. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51505/IJEBMR.2026.10918