Dating Cinderella: On Subsidiarity as a Political Safeguard of Federalism in the European Union

The aim of this article is to provide a brief overview of the debate on the subsidiarity principle. Subsidiarity is one of the most ambiguous and debated notions in law, and it definitively belongs to all the legal disciplines, from EU law to constitutional and administrative laws, passing through human rights law. The debate on this principle has been enriched recently by a number of articles and books focused on the new provisions concerning national parliaments included in the Lisbon Treaty.