The Regions within Multi-Level Governance: Enhanced Opportunities for Improved Accountability?

Abstract

Multi-level governance has increasingly been recognized as a paradigm for EU integration. However, the role of regions and regional institutions within the integration process has been incoherent, and the participation of regions in EU decision-making has been varied. This is primarily because the involvement of regions has largely depended upon the internal constitutional arrangements of the Member States and the competences given to regions through internal (national) public law. The Treaty of Lisbon, by addressing the need for improved accountability, recognizes that regions should have a formal role to play in seeking to improve both the quality and legitimacy of legislation. The focal point for this comes in the form of the Treaty allocating the task of subsidiarity monitoring to the Committee of the Regions, alongside national parliaments. This article considers the new prerogatives which the Treaty has granted to the Committee of the Regions. It looks at the extent to which these represent recognition of regional competences and whether they reposition the EU's regions within the EU polity. In particular, this article addresses the question of whether subsidiarity monitoring by the Committee of the Regions is sufficient to protect the exercise of competences by regional institutions.