ABSTRACT
The European Union (EU) comprises 28 Member States with a population of over 500 million people. The EU is the creation of the original European Economic Community Treaty, as amended. EU law, however, is not international law as normally understood in the sense of merely establishing mutual obligations between contracting states. In addition to creating mutual obligations between Member States, EU law also involves the transfer of sovereign rights to the institutions of that system and the creation of rights and obligations for their citizens which are enforceable in their local courts. Subsidiarity is a fundamental concept designed to achieve an appropriate balance between the institutions of the EU and Member States. Designed to determine the appropriate level of action across the whole spectrum of public activity, international, national, regional and local, it has been invoked in the European context to assist in determining the exercise of powers.
