European Citizenship

Abstract

More than a decade after the Maastricht Treaty came into force, on 1 November 1993, it is still unclear what we should make of the so-called ‘citizenship of the Union’ which was inserted into the EC Treaty. Is it an incipient form of European citizenship and consequently an unmistakable step away from the nation-state paradigm? Or is it rather an empty symbol introduced to cover up the European Union’s legitimacy problems? Following the historical and conceptual analysis of citizenship in Chapter 2 we now turn to the development of European citizenship. Although the question about the intrinsic value of European citizenship cannot be answered purely by looking at the European level, because a wider analysis of a change in traditional (national) conceptions of citizenship is also demanded, this book can obviously not do without a more detailed study of the concept of citizenship within the European Union.