Coupling National Identity with Subsidiarity Concerns in National Parliaments' Reasoned Opinions

Abstract

This article builds on the assumption that both the concept of subsidiarity and the concept of respect for national identities were introduced by the Maastricht Treaty to carry out the constitutional accommodation of national values and interests in the European legal order, permeating the parliamentary debates related to the ratification processes. Against this backdrop, this article analyses the use of Article 4(2) TEU – requiring the EU to respect Member States' national identities – in some national parliaments' reasoned opinions scrutinizing the compliance of EU legislative proposals with the principle of subsidiarity. The aim is to assess if – and to what extent – national parliaments, as national actors exercising their monitoring functions, could reframe the subsidiarity inquiry from a ‘comparative efficiency test’ to a sort of ‘non-encroachment (upon Member States) test’ referring to the concept of respect for national identities.