Regulating Unhealthy Lifestyles in the European Union from Part I - Regulating Unhealthy Lifestyles in the EU
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2026
Chapter 3 investigates the EU’s competence to regulate unhealthy lifestyles. Two main rationales for EU intervention in the field can be found in the TFEU. The first, historically and conceptually predominant, is related to the market. EU regulation contributes to the establishment of the EU internal market, by addressing the externalities of Member State lifestyle policies and their restrictive effect on free movement, of goods in particular. This rationale corresponds to broad and functional powers to eliminate trade barriers between Member States, via the EU’s fundamental free movement provisions, so-called negative integration, and the harmonisation of health standard at the EU level, positive integration. The second rationale concerns health as a standalone value, independent of the economic dimension of unhealthy lifestyles. For this rationale, the EU has been granted a much more limited competence. This explains why, in legal terms, EU law on unhealthy lifestyles remains a form of economic and market regulation, with a key role for Article 114 TFEU.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.