The Subsidiarity Principle
How the EU decides which level of government should act, the legal principle that is supposed to prevent Brussels from overreaching, and why it rarely works in practice.
What Subsidiarity Means
Subsidiarity is the principle that decisions should be taken at the lowest level of government capable of addressing the issue effectively. In the EU context, this means Brussels should only act when the objectives of a proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by member states alone. The principle was formally enshrined in the Maastricht Treaty of 1992 as a response to concerns about EU overreach.
The logic is intuitive. Cross-border pollution should be addressed at the EU level because one country's emissions affect its neighbors. But education curriculum or local planning decisions have no cross-border dimension and should remain with member states or regions. In practice, the boundary between EU-level and national-level competence is contested for almost every policy area. The Commission argues that the single market requires harmonized regulations; member states argue that harmonization goes too far.