Unión Europea y financiación autonómica: La jurisprudencia del Tribunal de Justicia sobre los sistemas tributarios de los entes territoriales subestatales

The matter of financing sub-State territorial entities is a relevant matter in which Spain is becoming subject to a controversial political and juridical debate. We find ourselves faced with an internal matter and, due to this, each Member State is charged with regulating its articulation according to its national constitutional framework. However, that freedom of internal regulation must be adapted to the Community juridical framework in all cases and not clash with any Community regulations, most particularly, with those related to the juridical regime on State subsidies. Thus, the Courts of Justice of the European Union have successively prepared jurisprudence that began with the Azores case (2006) and was confirmed in the UGT-Rioja case (2008), by virtue of which certain criteria are determined that must coincide in order that a tax subsystem in the autonomous regions– such as that available in the Basque Country and Navarra – may cohabit harmoniously with the national tax system without incurring breach of the juridical regime of State aid foreseen in the Constituting Treaties. Such criteria may be considered as a two-fold system: on one hand, the existence of an asymmetry of competences recognized in constitutional terms between the sub-State territory and the national territory in which it is integrated and, on the other hand, for the sub-State entity to have sufficient autonomy, both in institutional terms, as well as in procedural and economic ones.