Subsidiarity
12. In our Report on the 2005 Work Programme, we
recommended that the Commission should include a question about
subsidiarity in its road maps.[10]
We are therefore pleased to see that this year's road maps
include consideration of subsidiarity in its first question.
13. At its meeting in London in October 2005, COSAC,
the Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees of
Parliaments of the European Union, agreed to identify legislative
measures in the Work Programme which committees might like to
examine with particular emphasis on the subsidiarity and proportionality
provisions[11] of the
existing treaties. On the basis of suggestions made by some of
the Committees, the two measures chosen at the February meeting
of COSAC Chairmen were:
- Draft regulation on applicable
law and jurisdiction in divorce matters (expected in July); and
- Draft directive on full accomplishment of the
Internal Market for Postal Services (expected in December).
14. We examine all EU Documents which come before
us in relation to subsidiarity, on the basis of the statement
on the subject which we expect the Government to include in its
Explanatory Memorandum. We shall of course pay particular attention
to what the Government has to say about these two measures when
they appear.
10 HC 38-xiii (2004-05), para 15 (23 March 2005). Back
11
Article 5 EC includes this paragraph: "In areas which do
not fall within its exclusive competence, the Community shall
take action, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity,
only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action
cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore,
by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better
achieved by the Community." See also the Protocol on the
application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality
(inserted by Treaty of Amsterdam). Back
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