What is subsidiarity? The EU principle explained, and how radical centrism uses it as a decision rule

Subsidiarity is the principle that a decision should be taken at the lowest level that can take it well. A town decides what a town can handle; a region, a country or the European Union steps in when the lower level cannot do the job and the higher one can do it better. It is one of the founding rules of the EU, it appears in every Commission proposal, and it is one of the least used powers in European politics. For radical centrism it is also the eighth rule of the constitution we completed this week: decide at the lowest level that can do the job, and move up when scale demands it.

What the Treaty says

The legal text is Article 5(3) of the Treaty on European Union. In areas outside its exclusive competence, the Union acts only if and in so far as the objectives of a proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states, at central, regional or local level, and can be better achieved at Union level by reason of the scale or effects of the action. Two conditions, then, and both must hold. The lower level falls short, and the higher level adds something because of scale or because effects spill across borders.

The same article adds proportionality: the content and form of EU action must not go beyond what is needed to achieve the Treaties' objectives. Subsidiarity asks who should act. Proportionality asks how much.

How it is policed

Protocol No 2 to the Treaties gives national parliaments the job of enforcing the rule. According to the European Commission, each parliament has eight weeks from receiving a draft law to send a reasoned opinion if it thinks the draft breaches subsidiarity. Each national parliament has two votes, one per chamber where there are two. If reasoned opinions reach a third of the votes, the "yellow card" is triggered and the Commission must review the proposal and decide whether to keep, change or withdraw it. If they reach a majority under the ordinary legislative procedure, the "orange card" applies, and the Parliament or the Council can stop the proposal.

The yellow card has been raised three times: in 2012 against a regulation on the right to take collective action, which the Commission withdrew for lack of political support; in 2013 against the European Public Prosecutor's Office; and in 2016 against the revision of the posted workers directive, when 14 chambers in 11 countries objected. The Commission kept the last two. The orange card has never been used.

The machinery is mostly idle. The Commission's annual report for 2024 records 252 opinions from national parliaments, down from 402 in 2023, and only 14 of them were reasoned opinions on subsidiarity, spread over 11 proposals. The most contested, a proposal on corporate income tax known as BEFIT, drew three, which the Commission describes as far from a yellow card.

Spain takes part more than most. The same report lists the Spanish Cortes Generales as the third most active chamber in 2024, with 18 opinions. Under Ley 8/1994, the Joint Committee for the European Union issues reasoned opinions on behalf of both chambers within the eight-week deadline, and it can ask the government for a report within two weeks. Every EU draft is also sent to the parliaments of the autonomous communities, whose opinions count if they arrive within four weeks. Within six weeks of an EU act's publication, the committee can ask the government to take the case to the EU Court of Justice.

Draghi's version

Mario Draghi's 2024 report on European competitiveness gave subsidiarity a new prominence. His foreword describes a Europe that takes larger steps in some areas, delegating to the EU tasks that can only be done there, and steps back in others, applying the subsidiarity principle more rigorously and reducing the regulatory burden on companies. The report asks EU institutions for more self-restraint. It notes that only nine of the EU's 39 national parliamentary chambers issued reasoned opinions in 2023, and calls for an inquiry into why national scrutiny is so passive.

Draghi's point is that subsidiarity works in both directions. The same rule that sends some decisions back to member states sends others up to the EU, for tasks that can only be performed there.

Subsidiarity as a radical-centre decision rule

Read this way, subsidiarity lets the radical centre combine three ideas that usually sit in different camps.

From the left comes the conviction that some public goods only exist if they are built in common. An integrated electricity grid, joint defence procurement or a European capital market need scale and shared funding, and they are hard to build one country at a time.

From the right and the liberal market tradition comes the insistence that decisions belong close to the people who live with them, and that a distant authority should show restraint before it regulates. Draghi's call for the EU to step back in some areas belongs here.

And from Isaiah Berlin comes an idea that fits neither camp. His value pluralism holds that genuine values are many, that they conflict, and that no single formula ranks them. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarises, Berlin linked this to support for experiments in living and social variety. Applied to government, it means that a region choosing differently from its neighbour is a feature, a way of discovering which answers work, and a reason to keep many decisions local.

Combined, these give a practical test that any policy on this site will have to pass from week 2 onwards. For each decision, ask four questions. Can the local or regional level do this well? If not, can the national level? Does the problem spill across borders, or need a scale only Europe has? And whichever level gets the job, how will it report back so the choice can be revised? Housing permits and school timetables usually stay low. Energy networks, carbon pricing and asylum rules usually go up. The rule earns its place by being applied case by case, with reasons given in public, as the Treaty already demands and national parliaments, including Spain's, have every power to enforce.