Contribution du Sénat au groupe de travail « Subsidiarité et proportionnalité » de la Commission européenne

On 1 March 2017 the European Commission presented its White Paper on the Future of Europe by 2025. This document explores diferente approaches for the future of the European Union after the planned exit of the United Kingdom on 30 March 2019. It provides a basis for the political contribution that the Commission must submit to the European Council on the future of the European Union which will meet in Sibiu (Romania), on 9 May 2019. According to one of the scenarios presented, entitled “Doing Less More Efficiently (scenario 4), the European Union should increase its efforts in certain areas, and at the same time cease acting or intervene less in the areas where its action is perceived as having more limited added value or not having delivered the promised results. It was with this in mind that on 18 January 2018, the European Commission implemented a Task Force on Subsidiarity and Proportionality. This working group is composed of six members: three representatives from national parliaments appointed by the Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees of Parliaments of the European Union (COSAC) and three representatives from the Committee of the Regions. It is chaired by Mr Frans Timmermans, First Vice-President of the European Commission. Three tasks were assigned to it: - to determine if the procedures put in place regarding subsidiarity are working and to explore enhancement options; - to define the areas in which the European Union should intervene and those which should be dealt with at a national and regional level; - to better involve regional and local authorities in the European legislative process. The Task Force should report on its findings by the summer. The findings of its work will be fed into the Commission’s contribution at the European Council in Sibiu, under the Romanian presidency. Since the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the national parliaments have been able to develop a certain amount of expertise in the area of subsidiarity. Protocol N° 2 annexed to the treaty gives them the right to scrutinise draft legislative acts in order to verify their compatibility with the principle of subsidiarity. Regular monitoring has allowed our committee to evaluate the procedure itself and to recommend certain improvements as described in this report. More broadly, the British referendum on the UK leaving the European Union causes us to reflect on the sphere of activity of the European Union. Although Brexit may reinforce the need for unity and cohesion, is must not overshadow the difficulties related to the functioning of the Union, in particular its lack of clarity and proximity to its citizens linked in part to a form of bureaucratic mindset and to the legislative inflation that could ensue. A certain scepticism in public opinion has increased and the European political project has not, as yet, secured the wholehearted approval of the Member States. Added to this area of lack is a certain propensity to the “Brusselisation” of national failures. The emerging image of European Union is inevitably blurred, thus raising the question of the added value of its
action. The question of a clearer division of powers and respect for the principle of subsidiarity is now more than ever at the heart of the discussions
on the relaunch of the European project. All shared exercises in sovereignty must be carried out as a practical response to specific needs. These shared exercises should not be imposed on Member States and should be treaty based and not based on a federalist reading of them. The Union remains primarily a federation of Nation States and not a Federal State in the traditional sense. The objective of the building of Europe cannot be reduced to one of uniformity. Harmonisation and convergence leaves a margin of discretion to Member States. Greater respect for the principle of subsidiarity at a European level raises greater awareness of diversity, but also facilitates awareness of the expectations of the economic players concerning any new European standards. The aim is to balance political time and economic time, the latter often moves more quickly than the former. However, the concept of subsidiarity should not be confused with a rigid vision of sovereignty. If subsidiarity has become, and with good reason, an important political tool, it should not depart from its original aim, that of facilitating European Union action when the circumstances do so require and ensuring that public policy is not implemented in isolation within each Member State. This report outlines the areas in which the action of the European Union should be strengthened and those in which it should only act in support of Member States. It is based in part on the proposals contained in the report by the Senate’s monitoring group on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom and the rebuilding of the European Union, published in February 2017.