Speeches, Interviews

European Conference on Subsidiarity, Introduction by Andreas Khol

Now, ladies and gentlemen, no need for me to introduce you to our guests – furthermore the time allotted to me is just five minutes – and I would need much longer to introduce them all. I would like to welcome the president of the European Parliament, my friend Josep Borrell Fontelles, very cordial welcome to you, Sir. And we have a number of speakers and presidents of various parliaments. They don’t like to travel that much because they want to be back home to take care of business there. But we do have some here: Paavo Lipponen, France Cukjati, Premysl Sobotka, and others; they have all found their way here to St. Pölten, as well as to Vienna. Thank you for coming to this conference, even though I am sure there is other important business to attend to back home.

Subsidiarity is a rather bulky notion. People often use this word, it is a catch word which no one can really explain. The media have a hard time dealing with this bulky notion, in this regard they are quite powerless. We would like to try and translate this notion, if you like. There are some who heap praise on subsidiarity but we want to turn everything a bit more operational. There are conferences which I attend that focus on subsidiarity, but nothing moves forward in Strasbourg and Brussels. We want to do the job right, we want to come to the nitty-gritty of the subject, if you like, and this on the basis of the Amsterdam Treaty.

I don’t need to engage in ‘cherry-picking’ in terms of the European Constitutional Treaty, which is a very good treaty, but there is still a road ahead and that is going to be quite a tortuous road. Now the Amsterdam Treaty has already enshrined the principle of subsidiarity, and there is the Protocol no. 30 devoted to this issue. On this basis, I would like to talk about this issue now. How can we take action rather than use nice sounding words? There is a European Parliament and there is a European Council, two lawmakers. And of course there are the national parliaments and there needs to be a division of tasks. There are also regional parliaments. Criticism has been levelled at Brussels; people say Brussels regulates everything: the curvature of cucumbers, unified hunting laws on the European level, etc. The principle of subsidiarity states that regional interests must be kept in mind.

What Dimitrij Rupel said earlier about subsidiarity is something that I completely agree with, there is no need for me to add anything to his statements. People say Brussels regulates everything, Governor Sausgruber doesn’t say that, he says that Vienna regulates everything. He is the governor of Vorarlberg, and he says it is difficult to accept Vienna’s dominance, we need to enhance proportionality, power needs to be distributed more equally, and there is too much red tape.

European lawmaking should be based on principles so that national and regional parliaments have a greater say. We should also talk about suggestions and proposals this afternoon. We have given this a lot of thought and our goal is the following: there should be two things we take home from this conference, if you like. First, concrete proposals as to a subsidiary test. Professor Calliess, who will give a talk on this ‘litmus test’ later on, will talk about what subsidiarity actually is. And we would like to see this ‘shibboleth’ or litmus test in order to then pass on to those in charge of things in Luxembourg. Furthermore, the Commission should go to work in order to introduce several ideas, and before a legal act is passed, parliaments should be informed about the intent of laws; the national parliaments should then be able to coordinate affairs at the level of COSAC, the committee that you all know. This Committee does a sterling job, and the Commission, if the national parliaments raise objections concerning subsidiarity, proportionality, or intensity, needs to take these objections seriously. In my opinion, this is a significant contribution towards bringing Europe closer to its citizens. Self-determination is an ultimate goal at the community, regional, federal, and European levels. This, of course, refers to decentralisation but not only that – and this ties in with what previous speakers have said – I do believe, subsidiarity is a two-way process. It is not a one-way street. There are important European issues to be dealt with by European institutions, EU bodies, security, external security, justice, cooperation in the field of justice. These issues should be dealt with at the EU level, and then there are questions that should be addressed at the regional level, those questions that affect regional authorities. We have submitted and will be submitting proposals. We would thus like to give thought to all these things and to talk about hard facts rather than lofty words.