During the last decades, many European countries have experienced an important regionalisation process within their political structures, giving as a result a greater impulse to the development of territorial entities at a sub-national level. It is difficult to make cross-national comparisons, because the resultant regions have a very different nature concerning their legal status and their political quality. This is in part because they come from different historical backgrounds and different socio-political traditions. In some cases, regions appear because the central state has decided to reduce its burden of sole responsibility and share some powers. Sometimes, they are the result of citizen’s reactions to too centralised decision-making processes, which are considered not to be adjusted to people’s real needs. In other cases, they are a response to the demands for autonomy of certain groups or minorities, which consider that the central state is discriminating them whether in economic or social terms. For those groups, regions tend to have a strong symbolic value and act as a mean of expression of particular identities. Spain can be an example of the latest, where constitutional regions such as Catalunya appeared after a transitional process that was meant to solve some of the historical conflicts that Franco’s dictatorship had silenced by the means of political repression.

Despite these progresses, the position of Catalunya within the system of governance has kept some ambiguities, some of them caused by the European Union (EU) integration process. As many other regions, Catalunya has not been directly involved in the decision making at EU-level, even though the Brussels-based supranational structures can take decisions that are of exclusive competence of the Catalan Government at the domestic level. On the other hand, the Spanish government has not managed to involve regional representatives in the decision-making affecting those issues within the EU institutions. Thus, the central government has not been convincing enough in its representative role, lacking democratic legitimacy and efficiency.

All those patterns of behaviour have lead to a disillusion, just when Catalan society was starting to think in terms of Europe. In this first phase of awareness, the feeling of suspicion is, unfortunately, growing fast. For instance, many Catalan people think that the Spanish Government is using the EU to jeopardise Catalan competencies and dissolve the Catalan culture (starting with its differentiated language), since the Catalan interests and culture can’t be represented in the current European institutions. It is also extended the idea that European institutions are not interested in people's differentiated needs and culture and they are not (or don’t want to be) powerful enough to keep the democratic achievements of the regional governments alive. In a way, they feel discriminated and, with such a feeling, it exists the risk of a resurgence of regional and national identities that could undermine European stability.

In order to overcome the problem, some steps have been done at the EU level. For instance, the European Parliament has formulated things like a Charter of Regionalisation (1988) and the European Commission has established the so-called partnership principle, and it has supported trans-border co-operation with particular programs. At the same time, it has been created the Committee of Regions (established with the Treaty of Maastricht), so that regions have their own institution within the decision-making machinery of the EU. But those are only compensatory measures that do not solve the problem concerning democratic representation. De facto, the Committee of Regions is the institution with less power (if any) of the whole EU system, and has only a consultative status. It has proved to be insufficient, so most of the constitutional regions have tried to overcome the constraints imposed by their own state by promoting their interests through alternative means (Assembly of Regions –EAR-, information offices, lobbying, networking,…).

Taking all those elements into account, JEF-Catalunya thinks that part of the problem could be solved by providing a serious constitutional standing for subsidiarity (even if the principle already appears in all the discourses, it hasn’t been properly implemented so far). Subsidiarity is one of the main principles that should define a European Federation and Constitution, all together with Democracy and Solidarity. The principle of subsidiarity provides for a union of federal entities with full respect for their cultural and political diversity, as well as for their minority rights, at the local, regional and national level. At the same time, through the separation of public prerogatives in the fields of legislation, administration, and jurisdiction among the different institutional levels, excessive concentration of power can be avoid and its abuse prevented.

But if we want to involve European society in the European project and guarantee an all-levels democracy, we can’t stop subsidiarity at the borders of Member-States. All the democratic institutions at EU, national, regional and local level have a duty to contribute to define this new project and the right to be involved in its implementation. The sub-state level is a legitimate player and must be included, in order to overcome the criticisms of democratic deficit. The demands claiming that regions should play a more active role in the EU integration process go beyond the debate on whether regions should or should not replace the nation states, putting a “Europe of Regions” in the place of a “Europe of States”. Independently of our opinion on this, we cannot deny that strengthening their status and enlarging their functions in an enlarged EU is a matter of good governance and grassroots democracy.

JEF-Catalunya recognises that many political steps are already being done to lead the EU towards this direction. For example, during the preparations for the former Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) in 2000, an initial impetus was given for close co-operation between the constitutional regions. At a ministerial conference, which took place on 20 September 2000, several constitutional regions expressed their support for a common position regarding the IGC with an eye to strengthening the regional dimension of the European Union. In Nice, the European Heads of State and Government made an appeal to hold an extensive debate on the future of the European Union and the constitutional regions expressed their wish to participate actively. On 22 February 2001, the Belgian Prime Minister and to the European Commissioner Barnier submitted the political declaration of the constitutional regions Bavaria, Catalonia, North-Rhine Westphalia, Salzburg, Scotland, Flanders and Wallonia on the strengthening of the role of the constitutional regions in the European Union (Brussels, 28 May 2001). Now, the constitutional regions demand to participate directly in the preparatory work for the Intergovernmental Conference of 2004. They want a broader discussion than the themes listed by the IGC of Nice and urge that ‘the role and setting of the regions in the European policy-making process and the institutional framework’ must be added as a subject to be debated.

JEF-Catalunya thinks it is extremely important to discuss the role of regions. To go further on behalf of subsidiarity, some points must be taken into consideration along the Constitutional Convention process:

- The principle of subsidiarity has to be taken as the basis for the debate on the European Union’s key tasks, a debate that has to result in an effective European Union that shall only take action if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved on the local, regional and national levels.
- The European Union’s missions need to be carefully considered and, in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity, redefined by a clearer allocation of powers, so these can be more effectively distinguished from those of the Member States and their regions.
- In order to ensure due compliance with the principle of subsidiarity and therefore guarantee full respect for the constitutional regions’ own areas of competence; the political role of these regions has to be strengthened within the European Union.
- Further active steps have to be taken within the EU institutions themselves in achieving decentralisation and less bureaucratic systems of decision-making.
- It is necessary to rethink the role of the Committee of Regions, in a way that it becomes a third (meaningful) chamber, or even a second chamber itself, once reformed and restructured, substituting the Council.

In a Europe made of multiple identities, realities and levels of institutions the only effective alternative is to build a multi-level system based on subsidiarity as close as possible to the citizen. A Federation gives to the bigger and the smaller entities what they respectively better can do, and this is what is necessary to re-design, in accordance with the subsidiarity principle. Nobody says it is easy to organise: in fact, it requires an imaginative exercise without precedents, because the political (as well as mental) processes and structures we all have been using until today need to be reviewed. But it is fair and necessary if we want to establish a federalist multilevel EU system, with a local and regional level besides the supranational and the national levels, where all Europeans citizens can feel represented and not discriminated anymore.

JEF-Catalunya
mailto:jefcatalunya@yahoo.es
www.jefcatalunya.org