Discussing Subsidiarity in Terms of Justification

Abstract

This article attempts to study the inter-institutional dimension of the practical implementation of the subsidiarity principle in the EU legislative process. The main research question is whether the subsidiarity principle could be a real communicative tool in the EU’s multi-level regulation policy used to seek consensus between EU institutions and national parliaments on the justification of an appropriate level for EU actions (subsidiarity justification). The short answer is ‘yes’. Through the content analysis of the published documents and with the help of the theory of deliberation, the author argues for a subsidiarity justification procedure occurring at the beginning of each instance of the EU legislative process to provide an inter-institutional setting to move away from confirming (one-way) to deliberative (two-way) reasoning over the issue of potential subsidiarity violation in the EU legislative process.

Keywords

• Consensus
• Deliberation
• EU Legislative Process
• ‘Green Card’ Procedure
• Inter-institutional Dialogue
• Subsidiarity Control Mechanism