When, in the early 1990s, I was studying law, a particular series of lectures that I can still remember examined the principle of “subsidiarity”. Our lecturer, who was always concerned to ensure that we understood the granular details of the subject, explained that there are 23 versions of subsidiarity but that the only institution to truly understand the word in both principle and practice is the Catholic Church.

At the time I was studying, the Treaty of Maastricht was enshrining subsidiarity as a general principle of EU law. Subsidiarity would ensure decisions would be taken as close to the people as possible; it had what Alexis de Tocqueville called “a civic dimension” because it “increases the opportunity for citizens to take interest in public affairs; it makes them get accustomed to using freedom”.

There is an exact moment that I can pinpoint when I knew that the EU had abandoned subsidiarity. That was 10 July 2003 at the signing ceremony of the European Constitutional Convention. There were 15 months of negotiations for the Government of Tony Blair over the document that eventually turned into the Lisbon Treaty.