Where does the EU have no competence at all?

Among the areas that remain the sole responsibility of individual member states are the syllabuses of schools, national citizenship, housing, and the funding of public television, the welfare state, hospitals and the health service, corporate tax rates and any policy that requires large commitments of public money.

Until the EU pillar structure is abandoned in favour of a competence structure, issues included in the second (common foreign and security policy) and third pillars of the Maastricht treaty (police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters, justice and home affairs), will continue to be decided through intergovernmental agreement by decision-making in the EU Council based on unanimity. Individual governments may abstain.

In these areas, the EU Commission and Parliament play only a minor role. The policies that this arrangement affects are foreign policy, development aid, human rights, the European rapid reaction force and peacekeeping in the second pillar, and anti-terrorism measures, drug or human or arms trafficking, crime and fraud.