Sir,

As co-rapporteur with Edmund Stoiber for the Committee of the Regions’ (CoR) March 1999 opinion on the subsidiarity principle, I was naturally very interested in his article. I, too, am a firm supporter of the introduction of a subsidiarity early-warning mechanism. And, like Bavaria’s Minister-President I also welcomed the strengthening of the subsidiarity principle in the EU’s draft constitutional treaty and it’s move toward a greater role for national parliaments and the Committee of the Regions. I am in no doubt that we need to ensure that these gains are enshrined in the text that ultimately comes into force!

 

Nevertheless, I have a number of concerns about approaching subsidiarity in purely legal or jurisdictional terms, because of possible clashes between different remits and areas of sovereignty. Without underestimating the powers of the Court of Justice, I think it is reasonable to assume that it will only be able to resolve disputes over the correct application of the subsidiarity principle in extreme and necessarily rare or symbolic cases. It follows that, even though we should by no means rule it out, recourse to the Court of Justice cannot be a systematic solution.

 

I myself am in favour of a more political approach to subsidiarity, meaning one which satisfies the governance requirements established by the European Commission in its 2001 White Paper. In concrete terms, this means that the Commission undertakes to conduct consultations sufficiently upstream before proposing legislation, justifies the added value of action at Community level, proposes proportionate legislative instruments and gauges their legislative, administrative and financial impact at the levels where the texts will be implemented, notably by regional and local authorities.

 

It was with these issues in mind that Edmund Stoiber and I entitled our opinion for the CoR plenary assembly "Developing a genuine culture of subsidiarity". In my view, we must make subsidiarity a flexible instrument that, whilst always aiming at efficiency and democratic representation of our citizens’ interests, can bring "more Europe" in some areas and "less Europe" in others. The challenge is using subsidiarity to bring about a "better Europe".

 

For this reason, I do not share Herr Stoiber’s leitmotif of "de-bureaucratisation" and "decreasing regulation" across the board at EU level. Moreover, to my mind, his examples of over-regulation – i.e. the directives on flood risk management and habitat and the REACH regulation – are all cases where the added value of European action is overwhelmingly clear.

 

Subsidiarity must not become a weapon that will be used against us, for example by preventing the European Union from legislating, when there is actually a pressing need for European-level solutions in areas of great concern to local and regional authorities, for instance in public services, the social economy, civil and natural crisis management and sustainable development.