Finanziamenti dell’Unione europea come mezzi alternativi per orientare le politiche degli Stati membri: quale impatto sulla ripartizione delle competenze?

The paper aims to examine the development of the EU’s spending power and its impact on the repartition of competences between the Union and the Member States. After outlining the innovations introduced by the latest multiannual financial framework and the Next Generation EU, the analysis turns to the interactions between the use of EU funding and the principle of conferral. On the one hand, the creation of EU spending programmes allows the EU to induce an increasing “europeanisation” in policy areas in which it could not adopt traditional regulatory instruments. On the other hand, funding conditionality, in its new “legislative” function, prompts questions about the limits beyond which its use alters the balance between the Union and the Member States.