Editorial
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | 10.1177/138826270400600401 |
| Author | Frans Pennings |
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
EDITORIAL
This Special Issue of EJSS comprises a selection from the papers presented at
the 2004 EISS conference in Rome. The theme of the conference was
Federalism and Subsidiarity in Social Security and the choice of location proved
to be very apposite since the principle of subsidiarity was invented in the days
of the ancient Roman Empire. It was reinvented in the 19
th
Century and
became one of the main principles informing the social policies
propounded by the Roman Catholic Church. It was then revived in the
last quarter of the 20
th
Century when it was used to delineate the powers of
the European Union versus its Member States. It means that the Union does
not have power to take any action unless the result can only be achieved or
can be achieved more efficiently at Union level. An individual Member State
can also apply the subsidiarity principle to the distibution of powers between
central and regional government.
The contributions to the conferences dealt with applications of the
subsidiarity principle at both EU and the national level. Although it is an
interesting point of departure for discussing the distribution of powers, it is
not an easy topic. At the 2003 EISS Conference on Free Choice in Social
Security
1
, it was possible to be in favour of or to be opposed to the
introduction of more free choice in social security. This was not so at this
year’s conference: speakers were neither clearly in favour of nor opposed to
subsidiarity, but used the term to describe particular developments in the
ongoing organisation of social security.
One important element in the discussions was that social security risks may
be very unevenly distributed within a country. Some areas are much poorer
and/or more densely populated than others and/or have an older
population. If a country makes regions (states) responsible for their own
social security costs, some regions will, as a result, have lower levels of
protection than others. Thus there is a tension between subsidiarity and
solidarity. For this reason, it was argued that essential social rights have to be
guaranteed at the central level. Subsidiarity may create problems, in
particular, if the community is too small or the labour market is inadequate
to sustain a social security system at the regional (state) level. Subsidiarity is
clearly not a panacea for the future organisation of social security.
The implications of a federal and subsidiarity approach to social security are
analysed in their contribution to this issue by Jesu
´s Ruiz-Huerta Carbonell
and Jose´ Manuel Dı´az Pulido, which describes the decentralisation of
Spanish old-age pension scheme. The paper could find no evidence of any
European Journal of Social Security, Volume 6 (2004), No. 4 295
1
See Special Issue EJSS Vol. 5, No. 4, December 2003.
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