EUROPEAN POLITICS FUNDAMENTALS — Chapter 1, Exercise 1
Sorting Competences
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QUESTION:
Using Article 2 TFEU's own three-category framework, classify each of
the following as exclusive, shared, or supporting:
  (a) EU-wide customs tariffs on imported goods
  (b) national environmental regulations on air quality
  (c) a national government's own public education curriculum

SOLUTION:

(a) EU-wide customs tariffs on imported goods → EXCLUSIVE competence
    (Article 3 TFEU). The customs union is one of the small set of
    policy areas where only the EU itself may legislate at all — a
    member state cannot set its own independent tariff schedule on
    goods entering the EU's own single market.

(b) National environmental regulations on air quality → SHARED
    competence (Article 4 TFEU). Environmental policy is one of the
    EU's real shared-competence areas: the EU can and does legislate
    (e.g. EU-wide air quality directives), but a member state retains
    the right to legislate on its own, more stringent national rules
    in the space the EU hasn't already occupied.

(c) A national government's own public education curriculum →
    SUPPORTING competence (Article 6 TFEU). Education sits firmly in
    the supporting/coordinating category — the EU can fund exchange
    programs (e.g. Erasmus+) or encourage cooperation, but it has no
    legal power to harmonize or override a member state's own
    curriculum content.

WHY THIS WORKS AS AN ANSWER
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The exercise is really testing whether the reader can apply the real
functional distinction the chapter established: exclusive competence
means "only the EU, full stop"; shared competence means "the EU may
act, and a member state fills in whatever the EU hasn't"; supporting
competence means "the EU can help, but never override or harmonize."
Each of the three examples was deliberately chosen because it maps
cleanly onto one category — a genuine ambiguous case (e.g. energy
policy, which straddles categories in practice) would need a more
qualified answer, but these three test the base distinction directly.