In recent decades, there has been significant growth in the number of regions in the world. And this in different forms: as a real level of government, as an economic entity or as an administrative configuration.
This is closely linked to our increasingly globalized world in which people find it difficult to recognize themselves and look for anchor points that are closer. This tension can only be resolved if we start from the adage “think globally but act locally”.
What does this mean for the European project and what does this project mean?
Thanks to the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU can be described as an organisation of states and citizens, in which citizens have the right to participate both in the national democracies of the countries and in the common democracy of the Union.
In a rapidly changing world, political inspiration and human-centred decisions are needed to shape and strengthen the values associated with “Europe”. Europe must be considered not only as a socio-economic project, but as a community in terms of destiny, life, purpose, responsibility and multicultural learning, as well as a meeting place of multiple identities. As a common space based on values, in unity and diversity.
From this starting point, we must ask ourselves how best to develop the means and the right decisions to respond to the major challenges we face: climate change, green economic transition, purchasing power, livelihood security, migration, strategic autonomy, energy independence.
And then the important principle of subsidiarity comes into play. Subsidiarity can simply be defined as making decisions that give people the best results and with which they identify the most.
The answer to this question is not unequivocal and will vary depending on the policy field in case. Sometimes the scale of decision-making is too big for one level or sometimes too small. And then the principle of proportionality can also help us. This means that the resources deployed and the most useful level of government chosen are commensurate with the objective to be achieved.
It turns out that the concept of multi-level governance should therefore be used. This concept can be better defined as “institutional action coordinated by the European Union, Member States, regions and local authorities, supported by partnership, with a view to defining and implementing policy objectives in the European Union”.
In doing so, account should also be taken of the place of regions in the policy of their Member State. Decentralization or deconcentration cannot simply be equated with regionalism or regionalization. In order to be able to speak of regions in the full institutional sense of the term, they must be regions based on democratic elections, with sufficient economic and social support and a common identity that certainly has additional added value. The so-called constitutional regions, which have powers under the constitution of their country, occupy a special place.
The above elements legitimize the place to be given to the regions.
They ensure the achievement of political objectives, provide answers to the many societal, economic and social challenges, are the emanation of cultural differences and contribute to national and European democracy.
