Abstract
European citizenship is a personal status made up of the rights (and duties) granted to (and imposed upon) Europeans by European Union law. In this book we analyse, reconstruct and assess European citizenship by reference to the theory and practice of democratic citizenship. To that effect, we elucidate a minimalistic concept of citizenship, as well as delineate the core elements of the democratic and social conception of citizenship characteristic of post-war European constitutional law. With such yardsticks in hand, we approach the evolution of European citizenship, showing the extent to which it should be regarded as one contingent manifestation of the European personal status. In this introductory chapter, we summarise the main assumptions, findings and conclusions of the book, as well as discuss (briefly) some methodological questions.
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Notes
- 1.
It could be argued that appearances are deceiving, though. It could well be that most Europeans identify themselves in a relevant way as Europeans, only they tend not to mobilise themselves politically, or at least not in obvious and explicit ways. But is that argument persuasive? The crises have revealed not only the limited extent to which Europeans regard European citizenship as part of their lived political identity, but also the extreme thinness of the protection that European law and politics can provide to those at the wrong end of social and political changes. If at all, European law has provided protection to Europeans not as political subjects, but as consumers (as in the Aziz ruling protecting the plaintiff against abusive contractual clauses that resulted in his eviction from his home) (European Court of Justice 2013).
- 2.
The history of borders and the associated institutional techniques is far from an edifying one, as borders have been erected and implemented with openly discriminatory, when not genocidal purpose (think about the bantustans in South Africa). But the fact that an institution is open to be abused and instrumentalised is not by itself a sufficient argument to favour its elimination.
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Menéndez, A.J., Olsen, E.D.H. (2020). Introduction. In: Challenging European Citizenship. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22281-9_1
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