| Abstract |
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been cooking for some time now. Some ingredients to that dish are missing though - notably, a clear competence of the European Union. In fact, the Union's struggle for an expansion of its powers - especially in the area of harmonization of national laws with a basis on internal market considerations - has led some doctrine to express concerns whether the relevant provisions could give the EU carte blanche to harmonize in a wide variety of subjects. In the pre-Lisbon era, some authors have called this tendency "competence creep".
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