RIATE | DIACT | CNRS | Paris Diderot Univ.

General principles of European governance / Term :

Subsidiarity is one of the guiding principles of European political action. According to article one of the Treaty on European Union, it corresponds to the objective which aims to ensure that decisions are taken at the closest possible level to the citizens.

Strictly defined, it only applies to the sharing of roles between the Community and the Member States (1) authorising the distinction between three categories of competences:

• those that are the exclusive prerogative of the Union;
• those that are the exclusive prerogative of the Member States;
• and, finally, those that are shared.

To the extent that regional policy belongs to a shared field, the European Spatial Development Perspective foresees (article 161) that the application of policy options shall be grounded on the principle of subsidiarity. In this framework, it thus insists, on the one hand, on the need for co-operation between the spatial development authorities at all levels, and on the articulation between Community policies and policies at the transnational, regional and local on the other. In a wider perspective, even if subsidiarity does not target legal relations between the Community and local and regional authorities, it is used in the field of spatial planning in respect of debates over the governance of European policies (2) thus being perceived, notably by the Commission, as points of support for the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity.

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(1) Article 5 of the Treaty establishing the European Community: “In areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Community shall take action, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved by the Community.” (2) On that subject, see the White Paper on European Governance.