EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE, FLORENCE DEPARTMENT OF LAW EUI Working Paper LAW No. 2002/10 Legitimising European Governance: Taking Subsidiarity Seriously within the Open Method of Coordination PHIL SYRPIS BADIA FIESOLANA, SAN DOMENICO (FI) All rights reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission of the author.
[email protected] © 2002 Phil Syrpis Printed in Italy in August 2002 European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I – 50016 San Domenico (FI) Italy Legitimising European Governance: Taking Subsidiarity Seriously within the Open Method of Coordination Phil Syrpis* I Introduction The familiar story about the challenge - for some, the crisis - facing the European Union goes something like this. Economic integration has been achieved. The internal market is complete, and the Euro has already become - as all currencies become, at least for those with means - a humdrum reality. In the efficiency-generating, politically-neutral years of (largely) negative integration, redistributive policy had been left to the Member States. This option is no longer open. In today’s brave new world, characterised by ever-increasing interdependence between economic actors, in part forged internally (ironically perhaps, the product of the completion of the internal market and EMU), and in part thrust upon Europe as a result of the external pressures of globalisation, Member States are being rendered impotent. There is a perceived need for common responses. The challenge is to articulate these responses in a way which does not offend the widely-held popular belief that policy, especially redistributive policy, made at the European level is somehow ‘less legitimate’ than policy made at national level.