Hello and We're going up the wrong way. We're going to have to stop.

Searlings of a natural law.

Hello and welcome to the Cape Watch podcast episode 8.

I'm Chris Kendall.

I'm an EU official.

But that's not why I'm here.

I'm here in a strictly personal capacity as somebody who's unhappy with Brexit and wants to talk about it with Steve,

my co-host. Unfortunately, Steve isn't here in person this week. He is off somewhere else,

and various scheduling difficulties mean that I'm doing, I'm recording the intro on my own.

But you're about to hear a discussion that we had last week while we were still in the same place. We talked about federalism, about democracy, and, oh, you'll love it. It's dead interesting.

What we didn't talk about last week during our conversation about federalism was the S word.

The S word is subsidiarity. I can't believe we didn't talk about

subsidiarity because, of course, it's a crucial concept when we talk about EU governance

and EU federalism. So what's subsidiarity? Well, let's, let's go straight to the horse's mouth. So from the

ULX database, which is the repository of EU law online, the principle of subsidiarity is defined in

Article 5 of the treaty. It aims to ensure that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen.

And that constant checks are made to verify that action at the EU level is justified,

in light of the possibilities available at national, regional or local level.

Now, stress, national, regional or local level.

In case of a breach of subsidiarity, the Committee of the Regions or EU countries may refer an act directly to the Court of Justice of the EU.

In other words, subsidiarity is about state action, government action, taking place at the level closest to the citizens.

When you Google it, it says something slightly different.

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