The assign­ment of rights to as low poli­ti­cal levels as pos­si­ble recom­mends its­elf becau­se pre­fe­ren­ces of citi­zens are bet­ter known at the com­mu­nal, pro­vin­cial or sta­te level, becau­se their influence is grea­ter, poli­ti­cal powers are more dis­tri­bu­ted and sin­ce decen­tra­liza­ti­on fur­thers effi­ci­en­cy and inno­va­ti­on in a sys­tem. Thus sub­si­dia­ri­ty requi­res that only the neces­sa­ry frame­work and tho­se decis­i­ons rela­ted to cases with strong exter­na­li­ties or to public goods cove­ring the who­le socie­ty are taken at the hig­hest level. Loo­king from this per­spec­ti­ve at the Lis­bon Trea­ty pro­po­sed for the Euro­pean Com­mu­ni­ty seve­ral important short­co­mings are found which are main­ly rela­ted to the fields of over­lap­ping com­pe­ten­ci­es of the Uni­on and the mem­ber sta­tes. It is shown that the prin­ci­ple of sub­si­dia­ri­ty, which has to be safe­guard­ed by intro­du­cing ade­qua­te insti­tu­ti­ons, would be much bet­ter ser­ved by the pro­po­sals of the Euro­pean Con­sti­tu­tio­nal Group.