| In the decade since the Maastricht Treaty, the principle of subsidiarity has had a profound impact upon the European Union, but in ways that have been largely overlooked. This work, which employs a constructivist approach drawn from international relations theory, demonstrates the impact of subsidiarity both on the EU's system of governance and its underlying constitutional structure. Subsidiarity is not, as is commonly supposed, merely a functional principle for the redistribution of competences among levels of government. Rather, it is a norm directed specifically at the EU, and as such has effects that are both regulative and constitutive---that is, affecting both its behaviour and its identity. Subsidiarity's effect on EU behaviour is evident in the alteration of its style of European governance since the early 1990s. While the number of powers that the Community possesses has not changed, it exercises its existing powers less often, and with greater self-restraint. In this sense, subsidiarity is a norm of self-limiting governance that has been internalized into the Community, causing a shift in its legislative culture. Subsidiarity's effect on EU identity has been to clarify its underlying constitutional relationship with the member states. This relationship is governed by subsidiarity as a constitutive norm: in other words, the Community is constituted as an entity that is ultimately subsidiary to the member states. In this way, subsidiarity provides coherent normative foundations for the EU's pluralist constitutional order. |
