Local democracy in 2020: Subsidiarity

This paper aims to shed light on the potential of the Committee of the Regions to contribute to the legislative process, and answer the question of whether this Committee is the right body to guarantee compliance with the principle of subsidiarity.

This article claims that innovation policies aimed to solve societal challenges, such as climate change or aging, are best pursued at subnational levels given the contested nature of problem identification and the contextual nature of problem-solving. Regional innovation policy, then, should formulate concrete societal goals tailored to the local context, while the transnational context promotes inter-regional learning and provides the complementary policies in the realms of basic research, regulation and taxation.

This article analyses the gender dimension of the European Commission’s proposals to revise the governance of the European Union in response to the crisis by increasing the powers of the European Union level.

The study presents the main features of subsidiarity monitoring and how the practice has evolved. Furthermore, it focuses on the two-level structure in the emerging a multilevel parliamentary system that is the supranational level, embodied by the European Parliament and the national level, represented by 28 national parliaments.

At a time when citizens are increasingly putting Europe’s democratic legitimacy into question, it is essential to place this principle at the heart of discourse on the EU. The Task Force on Subsidiarity, Proportionality and Doing Less More Efficiently, which was set up by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in November 2018, has identified a ‘new way of working’.

This paper considers how the general power of competence given in the 2011 Localism Act has been used by local authorities to establish housing and energy companies that are shaped to meet local needs and priorities, have different forms and create the opportunity to return to foundational principles of municipalism that rely on the independence created by subsidiarity.

The article analyses this phenomenon of populism and identifies both the opportunities it provides for the European People’s Party (EPP) and the threats it poses.

This paper analyzes the development of the concept of subsidiarity, its relationship with management theories and the implementation of the principle of subsidiarity in the context of local self-government in Poland and Lithuania by conducting comparative research.

Poland’s local governments, introduced into the public administration system in two stages in 1989 and 1999, have become important actors in the development policy conducted at the national and local levels. Setting up voivodeships —the third-level units of local government— was particularly significant for building strong foundations for a comprehensive regional policy in Poland.