Tax Sovereignty and European Fundamental Norms: A Constitutional Embedding of a Troubled Field of Integration

This paper aims to map the room for manoeuvre in European tax integration and thereby confront the discourse on (tax) sovereignty in general terms, as well as specifically for the European Union (EU). In doing so, it examines the historical development of European tax integration, focusing on the constitutional interplay between the EU and its Member States that should inform the legal debate on the correct allocation of taxing powers between the Union and its Member States. The starting point is that the Treaties themselves establish the creation of an internal market as an explicit goal, including taxation. Direct taxation is the field where this goal has not materialized, and this paper draws the direction of travel from the legal discussion on sovereignty, specifically applied to the context of taxation. It offers a new approach to the broader debate on European integration in taxation and limits sovereignty-based reasoning to legal argumentation, thereby depoliticizing the discourse.