Abstract

The article presents the EU competences system highlighting its rigidity, deriving, especially, from the separation of policies and of their respective objectives. The principal mechanisms apt to moderate such rigidity are explored with special reference to some elements of the recent praxis emerging from the responses to the pandemic crisis and to the rule of law backsliding. The dyad rigidity-flexibility is still likely to inform the EU competence system together some underlying unresolved ambiguities, due to political uncertainty and to the way some national constitutional guardians interpret their role and the constraints imposed by national constitutions to European integration