Guidance

Review of the balance of competences

The review of the balance of competences will be an audit of what the EU does and how it affects the UK.

• From: Foreign & Commonwealth Office
• Published: 12 December 2012
• Last updated: 18 December 2014 — See all updates

Introduction

The government is carrying out a review of the EU’s competences, which the Foreign Secretary launched in July 2012. This is an audit of what the EU does and how it affects the UK. It is important that Britain has a clear sense of how our national interests interact with the EU’s roles, particularly at a time of great change for the EU.

Government departments will consult Parliament and its committees, business, the devolved administrations, and civil society to look in depth at how the EU’s competences (the power to act in particular areas conferred on it by the EU Treaties) work in practice.

Our European partners and the EU institutions will also contribute evidence to the review, and it will examine issues that are of interest across the EU, seeking to improve understanding and engagement.

Government departments will then report on areas of competence and their findings will be published during the course of the review.

This short guide and glossary to EU law explains some terms and concepts commonly used in reference to EU law.

How will the review work?

The review will be broken down into a number of individual reports covering specific areas of EU competence. Departments will prepare reports drawing on evidence submitted to them.

They will do so over the course of 4 semesters:

• Autumn 2012 to Summer 2013
• Spring 2013 to Winter 2013
• Autumn 2013 to Summer 2014
• Spring 2014 to Autumn 2014

At the start of each semester, the relevant departments will launch calls for evidence setting out the scope of their work and requesting input from a range of interested parties, including members of the public with relevant expertise or experience. At the end of each semester, the reports will be published online.

The list and sequencing of reports in the table below is subject to revision if circumstances change.

Read the Balance of competences FAQs (MS Word Document, 20.6 KB)

How to feed in to the review

Once published, links to calls for evidence will be added to the table below.

Each call will include a series of broad questions on which your evidence should be focused.

Your evidence should ideally be objective, factual information about the impact or effect of EU competence in your area of expertise.

If you wish to submit evidence once the call has issued, please follow the links below and respond in the format requested by the given deadline.

We are looking for objective, factual information about the impact or effect of the competence in your area of expertise.

We expect to publish all evidence we receive at the same time as reports are published in order to deepen public understanding and facilitate debate, unless there is compelling reason not to do so.

We will publish the name of your organisation unless you ask us not to.

If you are writing on behalf of an organisation or individually, we will not publish your own name unless you indicate you wish it included. If you ask us to keep your contribution confidential, we will try to meet that wish provided there is good reason for this.

If we receive a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for information which you have asked us to keep confidential, we will seek to use the appropriate FOIA exemptions to withhold that information. But you should be aware that it is possible that we might be ordered to release it. In the meantime before the publication of evidence we will be likely to seek to use section 22 FOIA to exempt material from any FOIA requests in order to allow us to focus on collating and analysing evidence received.

Welsh language translations are available on request.

Semester 1

The reports in the first semester were published on 22 July 2013. You can read the reports, and the evidence submitted at the links below.

Autumn 2012 to Summer 2013.

	Report title	Departmental lead
1	Single Market	Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
2	Taxation	HM Treasury
3	Animal Health and Welfare and Food Safety	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
4	Health	Department of Health
5	Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid	Department for International Development
6	Foreign Policy	Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Semester 2

The reports in the second semester were published on 13 February 2014. You can read the reports, and the evidence submitted at the links below.

Spring 2013 to Winter 2013.

	Report title	Departmental lead
7	Single Market: Free Movement of Goods	HM Revenue and Customs
8	Asylum and Non-EU Migration	Home Office
9	Trade and Investment	Department for Business Innovation and Skills
10	Environment and Climate Change	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
11	Transport	Department for Transport
12	Research and Development	Department for Business Innovation and Skills
13	Culture, Tourism and Sport	Department for Culture, Media and Sport
14	Civil Judicial Cooperation	Ministry of Justice
15	Single Market: Free Movement of Persons (Published with Semester 3 reports July 2014)	Home Office

Semester 3

Autumn 2013 to Summer 2014.

	Report title	Departmental lead
16	Single Market: Free Movement of Services	Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
17	Single Market: Financial Services and the Free Movement of Capital	HM Treasury
18	EU Budget	HM Treasury
19	Cohesion	Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
20	Social And Employment	Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
21	Agriculture	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
22	Fisheries	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
23	Competition and Consumer Policy	Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
24	Energy	Department of Energy and Climate Change
25	Fundamental Rights	Ministry of Justice

Semester 4

Spring 2014 to Autumn 2014.

	Report title	Departmental lead
26	Economic and Monetary Policy	HM Treasury
27	Police and Criminal Justice	Home Office, Ministry of Justice
28	Information Rights	Ministry of Justice
29	Education, vocational training and youth	Department for Education
30	Enlargement	Foreign and Commonwealth Office
31	Voting, Consular and Statistics	Cabinet Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, National Statistician’s Office
32	Subsidiarity and Proportionality	Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Published 12 December 2012
Last updated 18 December 2014 + show all updates

1. 18 December 2014

   Final semester 4 reports added

2. 18 December 2014

   Final reports included

3. 22 July 2014

   Updated with links to consultation outcomes.

4. 27 March 2014

   Semester 4 consultations open

5. 29 October 2013

   Link to the call for evidence document added to Energy, Semester 3.

6. 22 July 2013

   Added links to first semester reports.

7. 12 December 2012

   First published.