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Publishers Abstract:
Legislative competences are potentialities -- entitlements for future legislation -- and only in the rare presence of exclusive European Community power will they pose an immediate and direct limit to national powers. Shared competences will have no such effects. Within shared powers, two legislators are equally competent to adopt legislation. Here, legislative overlaps exist and the potential for conflict arises. Each federal legal order opting for shared competences will, therefore, have to determine when conflicts between two legislative spheres exist and how these conflicts are to be resolved. For the Community's shared powers, these two dimensions have indeed been developed to structure the relationship between European and national legislation. In the EC legal order, the supremacy of Community law has long been established. In the event of a conflict between Community and national law, the former will prevail. This article will investigate the two constitutional principles that structure the Community's shared competences: the twin doctrines of supremacy and pre-emption.
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