Autonomia tributaria locale e integrazione europea

The main aim of this thesis is to understand which principles regulate the relationship between the domestic allocation of the power to tax and the European Union (“EU”). More precisely, the research focuses on the limits which the EU legal order sets on the freedom of sub-national levels of government to levy taxes. To introduce the structure of this work, the first chapter analyses the relationship existing between European law and the national orders. In the second, an attempt is made to describe the Italian and the Spanish internal levels of government, focusing on the regional level and highlighting the allocation of taxing authority. The reason for this comparison lies in the fact that there are a lot of similarities between the constitutional organization of these two countries. In the two following chapters, the impact of EU law on the self-government power to tax is considered. An in-depth analysis concerns the evolution of the EU case law on this matter in the light of the European concept of financial autonomy. More specifically, in the third chapter, the text deals with the constraints arising from positive harmonization, while in the fourth negative harmonization is considered. This part consists of two sections, the first on the prohibition of State aid, where the evolution of the selectivity concept is examined in detail, and the second on the fundamental freedoms. Finally, in the last chapter some conclusions and closing remarks are drawn.