INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION AND THE SUBSIDIARITY PRINCIPLE: A PROPOSAL FOR A VIA MEDIA

This article discusses implementation of the principle of subsidiarity in intercountry adoption cases. The authors demonstrate that, whilst this principle has become well established in international law, the precise nature of its application remains uncertain. The adverse effects of this uncertainty on the reception of the principle of subsidiarity in South African Law are analysed. It is shown that neither our courts nor the legislature have been able to provide the degree of clarity required by professionals and parties involved in intercountry adoption cases. A proposal for improved guidance is put forward.

Towards peace in Europe: on legal linguistics, prosperity and European identity – the European Reference Language System for the European Union

The European Union is a legal community of hundreds of millions of people, established in a single market through European law. This is tied to language and translation into 24 official languages, each with equally authentic status. However, this leads to considerable legal differences between Member States and underscores the dominance of English, at the Court of Justice that of French (monolingualism), both of which have no legal foundation. Rule-of-law order (Rechtsstaatlichkeit) is created by the European Reference Language System (Europäisches Referenzsprachensystem), which is presented here as a tool for the urgently required reform of the language laws in the European Union: Not having a hegemonial focus on a single language (and thus on a single legal world) or on the exclusivity of some few languages, it offers a legal-linguistic basis of communication with all treaty languages of the European Union for a clear European law and prosperity. The official languages of the Member States thus preserve the mother tongue reality of the citizens in the sense of the subsidiarity principle (multilingualism). In this way, the citizens and their Union acquire a legally valid voice and identity. This seems necessary in the face of the present restructuring of the world, in order to maintain peace for the people in Europe and to continue promoting their well-being. The basis is legal linguistics (Rechtslinguistik).

Discussing Subsidiarity in Terms of Justification

This article attempts to study the inter-institutional dimension of the practical implementation of the subsidiarity principle in the EU legislative process. The main research question is whether the subsidiarity principle could be a real communicative tool in the EU’s multi-level regulation policy used to seek consensus between EU institutions and national parliaments on the justification of an appropriate level for EU actions (subsidiarity justification). The short answer is ‘yes’. Through the content analysis of the published documents and with the help of the theory of deliberation, the author argues for a subsidiarity justification procedure occurring at the beginning of each instance of the EU legislative process to provide an inter-institutional setting to move away from confirming (one-way) to deliberative (two-way) reasoning over the issue of potential subsidiarity violation in the EU legislative process.

The Law-making Procedure

This chapter is dedicated to the law-making process, which is predominantly procedural. The first part (subsections B and C) of this chapter reveals the involvement of the European institutions, namely the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the Council and their respective, distinct roles within the legislative process. The second part (subsection D) analyses the requirement protecting the uniformity of European law, namely the last resort nature of enhanced cooperation. The third part (subsection E) explores ways for non-participating Member States to enter into enhanced cooperation, and ways in which participating Member States may leave the group. The last part (subsections F and G) of this chapter is dedicated to a more general question, the question of legislative power. Since the constitutional framework of enhanced cooperation only sets out the authorisation process for a group of Member States to use both the European institutions and the power of the European Union, the question of which laws can be enacted under the enhanced cooperation procedure, in particular with respect to the scope and content, depends on the ordinary competence framework. This part of the study provides an analysis of both the European internal market competence and the subsidiarity principle, and subsequently reveals what the Member States can accomplish in European taxation.

Implementation of educational policies for migrants: A case study in the Swiss canton of Geneva

The Swiss context presents a specific pattern being a confederal country relying on a subsidiarity principle. Thus, the cantons operate in a framework of a reduced power of central authority (Boulenger et al., 2012; Revaz, 2020) and are autonomous regarding education policies at local level (Akkari, 2019). However, since the adoption of a new law in 2005, the Federal Council, cantons, municipalities and cities officially collaborate on migration policy (Chifelle, 2018; Facchinetti, 2012). In this particular context, the confederation developed migration policies giving guidance to cantonal governments. Our research aimed at analyzing a confederal policy guidance on migrants’ education and its interpretation in the canton of Geneva. In particular, we examined the ”decoupling” between general guidance from the Confederation and the implementation at local level. For this purpose, we studied the implementation of a cantonal program named L’école des mamans (mothers’ school) dedicated to prepare migrants’ families for their children enrolment in primary school. Our main results show that there is a distortion between policy objectives and the implementation phase. We also observe a model of resistance to change with no modification of actors’ practices towards migrants’ parents despite the new integration policy guidance.

Conservation in the Future

The final chapter considers the factors likely to influence the value of species and ecosystems to individual users and the wider community in the future, including the factors likely to drive a wedge between the value of ecosystems to individual users or individual communities and to the rest of the world. It reviews environmental trends identified by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and economic trends identified by organizations such as the World Bank. Using the European Union’s subsidiarity principle as a guide, the chapter discusses the optimal scale at which to manage future conservation challenges, and the implications this has for governance. It concludes by applying the discussion to four issues of particular concern: forest conversion, the loss of landraces and crop wild relatives, marine capture fisheries, and emerging infectious zoonoses.

Balance-Sheet of European Social Policy

Specific competence of the European Union in the field of social security and social protection has been quite limited, as the Member States consider these two items as core subjects of national policies and appeal earnestly to subsidiarity principle to avoid European regulation. Influence of the E.U. has nevertheless been gradually and considerably increasing through the implementation of the Community rules on the internal market and competition. European social model is the so called “social market economy”, which means, in short, an economy ruled by a market whose transparency and fairness are guaranteed and controlled by the public powers. There is the will, at European level, to be able to achieve high economic and productivity growth, necessary to fuel recovery from crisis damages, while at the same time minimising so-called social failures, such as unemployment, poverty and social exclusion. The European Union addresses these areas as a matter of common concern and has a role in facilitating the exchange of information, data, best practices and research. The balance of European policies is in overall terms rather positive from the social point of view.

The Subsidiarity Principle and Legal and Economic Aspects of The Decentralization in Ukraine

The research highlights the peculiarities of the decentralization of power in Ukraine in the political and legal implementation aspect of the principle of subsidiarity. The objective of the study was to determine compliance with the political and legal aspects of the decentralization process in Ukraine based on global standards of the use of the principle of subsidiarity, during the implementation of decentralization reform. The research methodology is because the principle of subsidiarity is the main feature of the interaction of all levels of power. This premise is recognized in the European Charter of Local Self-Government and therefore means an urgent task in modern Ukraine. Financial decentralization, district consolidation, the creation of different but united territorial communities, changes in the administrative-territorial structure, ensuring the capacities of communities, the provision of public services in accordance with national standards must be based on the principle of subsidiarity. The information gathered makes it possible to conclude that the principle of subsidiarity is a barrier to the overly profound centralization of the state body and the separation of power.

The concept and example of assistance aid as a form of support in the social reintegration of prisoners in the context of the activity of the Roman Catholic parish

The aim of the article is to present the assistance aid and forms of support for prisoners undergoing the process of social reintegration in a religious community. A special area of values is the inclusion of the sustainable development principle in the scope of activities aimed at the reintegration process, organized mainly based on the applied subsidiarity principle. The article uses sociological qualitative methods, mainly the case study method based on the sociological observation of the convict and the person supervising him/her, which is included in the category of assistance support. The employment contract of the convicted person in charity work in the parish and spontaneous interviews conducted in the context of the activities of the supervisors were analysed. The result of the conducted observations and analyses is the determination of the purposefulness of the sustainable development principle in the reintegration process. This detailed social principium in the perspective of moderate anthropocentrism strengthens the reintegration process the most by optimizing the working time that a convict in the parish can perform for the environment. The working time saving index, which is the conclusion of the analyses, allows to expand the functionality of the parish as a social institution and improves the chain of goals pursued by the convict. The value of the natural environment does not play a significant role in these activities, because in the perspective of moderate anthropocentrism, the most important value is the person and activities aimed at reintegration in social life. The main form of support for an assistant is accompanying and enabling responsible use of parish resources.

Projekt kompleksowej reformy niemieckiego kodeksu cywilnego w zakresie Vormundschaftsrecht – stan aktualny

The paper discusses the 2nd working draft of government’s bill of reform of Guardianship Law (2. Diskussionteilentwurf ). The fundamental concept of the reform is an overall remodeling of the legal structure of the Civil Code regulations, de-bureaucratization of the requirements regarding custody of the ward’s property, his/her empowerment, introduction of the privilege to choose a non-compensated Guardian before the other types of Guardians with the simultaneous abolition of the subsidiarity principle and the cancellation of the Gegenvormund institution (a form of control authority for the supervision of Guardian).