How to Safeguard Subsidiarity and Competition in the European Union

Peter Bernholz ()
Additional contact information
Peter Bernholz: Universitaet Basel

Rationality, Markets and Morals, 2009, vol. 0, issue 23

Abstract: The assignment of rights to as low political levels as possible recommends itself because preferences of citizens are better known at the communal, provincial or state level, because their influence is greater, political powers are more distributed and since decentralization furthers efficiency and innovation in a system. Thus subsidiarity requires that only the necessary framework and those decisions related to cases with strong externalities or to public goods covering the whole society are taken at the highest level. Looking from this perspective at the Lisbon Treaty proposed for the European Community several important shortcomings are found which are mainly related to the fields of overlapping competencies of the Union and the member states. It is shown that the principle of subsidiarity, which has to be safeguarded by introducing adequate institutions, would be much better served by the proposals of the European Constitutional Group.

Keywords: subsidiarity; decentralization; European Community; Lisbon Treaty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.rmm-journal.de/downloads/024_bernholz.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rmm:journl:v:0:y:2009:i:23

Access Statistics for this article

Rationality, Markets and Morals is currently edited by Bernd Lahno

More articles in Rationality, Markets and Morals from Frankfurt School Verlag, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Friederike Pförtner ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).