ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the meaning and enforceability of subsidiarity and on how it affects European citizenship. My thesis is twofold. First, empirically as well as theoretically, a shift from the dilemma between the intergovernmental and supranational models to the dynamics of tangled hierarchies, as defined in complexity studies, allows a more complex, constructive and elegant view of multilevel government and citizenship of the EU. Tangled hierarchies consist of constantly changing relationships between the whole and its parts, which are characteristic of living beings and all systems with autonomous subsystems. Secondly, subsidiarity is an example of the type of legislation that point at this systemic level, as opposed to rules that focus on certain institutions only or certain levels. I will defend that a subsidiarity test rules out European Identity, while it would encourage an enhanced European Union citizenship.
