eSignature Legitimacy for Legal Services in European Union

How to eSign a document: eSignature legitimacy for Legal Services in European Union

welcome back everybody to our studies of European Union law in this video we are moving on to the next of our major topics for this particular uh set of lessons and this is going to be examining the sources of EU law the sources of law and the various different ways in which we arrive at those sources so things like the legislative process so this is going to be talking about the nature of the law itself rather than the nature of the institutions of the European Union if you remember back to previous lessons we spent a good amount of time talking about the roles the powers and the competences of the various different institutions of the European Union finishing with the European court of justice in the previous video this lesson is going to turn our attention away from the institutions the places in which law is created and adjudicated to the actual law itself we'll examine in these videos the concept of EU competence the sources of European Union law the various types of European Union law as well as the legislative process now this video in the next video is going to give us a little bit more indication as to what we mean when we examine the idea of competence what does competence actually mean within the context of the European Union well competence essentially refers to the matters which the European Union has jurisdiction so one of the things that's important to remember is that the European Union isn't a state it's not a state in the sense of the kind of West faan understanding of States uh that we have uh like the United States the the the state of turkey the state of Germany etc etc instead it is a collection of states it is a supernational institution and it is made up of the member states of the European Union and so one of the things that has to be recognized and has to be respected in that regard is the idea of the sovereignty of the member states in question so the people who who are the the states should I say who are essentially making up the European Union they have to have sovereignty and so the question of competence is one that is very important because when we have the European Union and we have the powers the European Union has it gets that power from States from the states delegating a little bit of its sovereignty uh all collectively delegating its sovereignty and giving that the right for the European Union to legislate on these matters so the question of competence is one that is very very much of of a matter of Paramount importance when it comes to uh the European Union so since we've I mentioned here since it is a supernational institution it has limited elements of democratic governance as well so one of the major critiques of the European Union is how Democratic it may or may not be um or at least the lack of democratic institutions it's a little bit more complicated than that but fundamentally it is not in some cases it's not as democratic itic as the states which form which form it and and and regulate it and so the kinds of things that the union is able to legislate and have power over is a difficult balance to reconcile and we also see that in the era of European politics there has been a lot of controversy in relation to the kinds of things that the European Union should and should not have jurisdiction over brexit is of course one of the main examples of how this is operated so with all that being said you can probably understand that the concept of competence is something that is regulated quite strongly namely by Article Five of the treaty on European union and Article 5 says the following they say that the limits of Union competences are governed by the principle of conferral we'll get to what this means in a minute the use of Union competences is governed by the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality we will get to that in future lessons as well under the principle of conferral the Union shall Act only within the limits of the competences conferred upon it by the member states in the treaties to attain the object objectives set out therein competence has not conferred upon the Union in the treaties remain with the member state so what is this telling us well this is telling us is that the idea of competence the power that the European Union has over certain areas of policy is conferred to it by the member states in the treaties so there is a sort of General Collective recognition by everybody who is involved in the European Union including the member states that they want to be part of the European Union for a particular purpose the European Union should serve a particular purpose given that fact and given the fact that it should serve a particular purpose these purposes are set out in the treaties and then the treaties in in ance with those objectives of those purposes will will then give us the principle of conferral where the member states will in ance with trying to set out and attain the objectives that are established by the treaties the member states shall give up some of their powers and and and therefore create competences to the European Union under the principle of subsidiarity um in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence the union shall Act only if and in so far as its objectives of proposed action can not be sufficiently achieved by the member states either at the central level or at a regional and local level but can rather by reason of scale and effects of the proposed action be achieved the better at the union level so what the principle of subsidiarity tells us is that where there may be some areas where it's not explicitly set out in the treaties that um the European Union should and has to have this power but it makes sense to for the European Union to have this Authority given the size and the scale of the action in question then it makes sense therefore for the member states to essentially delegate that authority to the European Union just because it's more practical for everybody else the institutions of the Union shall apply the principle of subsidiarity as laid down in the protocol on the application of principles of sub subsidiarity and proportionality we'll get to that in future lessons National parliaments ensure compliance with the principle of subsidiarity in ance with the procedure set out in that protocol part four of Article 5 says that under the principle of proportionality the the the third of these issues the content and form of Union action shall not exceed what is necessary to achieve the objectives set out in the treaties again what this is telling us is that assuming that we're going to have competence assuming that National member states which are democratic in nature are going to delegate their powers to a less Democratic supernational institution it that power should only be wielded in a way that is proportional proportional to what you may ask well proportional to the objectives that are set out in the treaties so this gives us a basic overview of what we mean when we talk about EU competence the provision here in Article 5 essentially shows us that the concept of competence is something that the union shall only have with reference to the authority and the consent of the member states and so this essentially gives us a sort of a nice balancing situation where we have the member states that want to retain as much National sovereignty as humanly possible but then you also have members of the European the European Union itself that wants to achieve its goals in so far as possible and so a balance has to be had in this relationship and this balance is established by Article 5 and is established through this concept of competence