Subnational Authorities in EU Law

Abstract

This book explores the role and status of local and regional authorities (also referred to as ‘subnational authorities’ or ‘SNAs’) in European Union law. It highlights that SNAs’ status varies depending our constitutional imagination. The discussion is focused through two conceptions of the status of SNAs in relation to the EU: ‘the insider narrative’ and ‘the outsider narrative’. If we examine EU law through a formal legal lens, SNAs appear as outsiders, that is to say entities of a fundamentally different status from the Member States that at best entertain indirect relations to the Union. If the perspective adopted is of a functional nature, SNAs however emerge in a noticeably different light, namely as allies of the Union that have in many ways assumed functions analogous to the Member States’ and which are able to influence EU law’s substantive development. The monograph explores these two narratives and moreover identifies the reasons and consequences of their coexistence. The concepts of polycentricity, porosity, and neofunctionalism are used to illuminate the analysis.