Abstract
Central concept in the ‘European language', the principle of subsidiarity is at the core of the European Union (EU) legal order, at the heart its politics and policies. With the principles of conferral, of proportionality, the direct effect of the supremacy of EU law, the principle of the subsidiarity is totally incorporated in the EU legal framework machinery. We can even say that the concept of subsidiarity is somehow the foundations of the Constitutional structure of the EU. Etymologically, subsidiarity (or subsidiary) is linked to military or the religious area. Subsidiarity has a meaning of assistance, an aid that can stay on the background.
Looking at a dictionary is always helpful for seeing the most common sense of a legal or a political term. The Chambers English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as `the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks that cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local level'.
Before analyzing legal provisions of the subsidiarity, Barber for instance declares that ‘the European principle of subsidiarity is concerned with the allocation of powers to pre-existing institutions: for instance, whether a decision should be taken within the institutions of the European Union or should be allocated to the Westminster Parliament' .
