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Carbonara, Emanuela; Luppi, Barbara; Parisi, Francesco --- "Subsidiarity for a Changing Union" [2012] ELECD 670; in Eger, Thomas; Schäfer, Hans-Bernd (eds), "Research Handbook on the Economics of European Union Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Economics of European Union Law

Editor(s): Eger, Thomas; Schäfer, Hans-Bernd

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849801003

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Subsidiarity for a Changing Union

Author(s): Carbonara, Emanuela; Luppi, Barbara; Parisi, Francesco

Number of pages: 16

Extract:

5 Subsidiarity for a changing union
Emanuela Carbonara, Barbara Luppi and
Francesco Parisi


1 THE SUBSIDIARITY PRINCIPLE

While the concept of subsidiarity reached political prominence in the twentieth century,
it is as "old as European political thought" (Carrozza, 2003, p. 38). According to Millon-
Delsol (1992), the concept of subsidiarity can be traced back to classical Greece. In
Politics, Aristotle conceived of society as an interconnected system of associations, with
each association required to perform specific tasks and provide for its own needs.1 In the
middle ages, Thomas Aquinas renewed the concept of subsidiarity in Summa Theologica
(1274). Aquinas and subsequent authors of the medieval scholasticism school viewed
subsidiarity as being built upwards from the person and his autonomy. Subsidiarity was,
therefore, the ordinating principle of the relationships between communities in society.
Each community (for example, a family) should be allowed to contribute to the public
good without interference from other communities or their ruling institutions and, at the
same time, receive aid when it needs it.
Politicians and political theorists such as Althusius, Montesquieu, Locke, Tocqueville
and Abraham Lincoln have used the concept of subsidiarity in their work (Carozza,
2003). In the nineteenth century, political theorists invoked the concept of subsidiarity
as a balancing criterion to bridge the opposing aspirations of those who advocated for
decentralized markets and those who believed in centralized planning.2 Subsidiarity
offered a viable criterion to avoid the totalitarian solutions advocated by those two
extreme views of society. The Catholic Church renewed its ...