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EPSO Auditors study materials
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EPSO Auditors: EU law and policies

EPSO Auditors · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

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EU law and policies

The EU law and policies domain tests the constitutional framework of the Union, the legal effects of its instruments, the budgetary and accountability architecture, and the policy vocabulary that auditor candidates meet in EU documents.

Sources and hierarchy

  • Primary law: TEU, TFEU and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which has the same legal value as the Treaties (Art. 6 TEU).
  • Art. 288 TFEU: a regulation has general application, is binding in its entirety and directly applicable; a directive binds as to the result, leaving form and methods to Member States; a decision binds its addressees; recommendations and opinions are non-binding.
  • Art. 290 delegated acts supplement or amend non-essential elements; Art. 291 implementing acts provide uniform conditions, through comitology.

Principles and remedies

  • Conferral, subsidiarity (Art. 5(3), Protocol No. 2, eight-week national-parliament scrutiny) and proportionality (Art. 5(4)).
  • Supremacy (Costa v ENEL, 6/64); direct effect (Van Gend en Loos, 26/62); vertical direct effect of directives (Marshall, C-152/84); no horizontal direct effect between private parties (Faccini Dori, C-91/92); consistent interpretation (Von Colson, 14/83); State liability (Francovich, C-6/90).
  • Actions: annulment (Art. 263), preliminary ruling (Art. 267), infringement (Arts. 258–260), non-contractual liability (Art. 340).

Budget and accountability

  • Arts. 310–325 TFEU cover own resources, the multiannual financial framework, the annual budget and the Financial Regulation (EU, Euratom) 2018/1046.
  • Arts. 285–287 establish the European Court of Auditors; Art. 319 gives Parliament the discharge on a Council recommendation. OLAF (Reg. 883/2013) investigates fraud; the EPPO (Reg. 2017/1939) prosecutes it.

Policy vocabulary

Single market, cohesion policy (ERDF, ESF+, Cohesion Fund), CAP, European Green Deal, Recovery and Resilience Facility (Reg. 2021/241), rule-of-law conditionality (Reg. 2020/2092).

Worked example

A directive orders Member States to ban a practice by 31 December 2023; State A does not transpose it. A private party cannot invoke the directive against another private party. The injured party may instead sue State A under Francovich if the provision is unconditional and sufficiently precise, and national courts must interpret national law consistently with the directive. The Commission may open Art. 258 proceedings and, if non-compliance continues, ask the Court for a lump sum or penalty under Art. 260.

Traps

  • Confusing regulations (directly applicable) with directives (transposition required).
  • Mixing subsidiarity with proportionality.
  • Assuming the Charter applies to every national measure rather than only when implementing EU law.
  • Overlooking the strict Plaumann test for non-privileged applicants under Art. 263.
  • Treating discharge as an audit rather than a political decision following audit.