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Foreword
I write these words six weeks after the terrible tragedy of right wing terror against government buildings in Oslo and cold-blooded assassination of young Labor Party politicians at Utøya, Norway. Finishing this book has not been easy in the immediate aftermath of such a disaster. I have friends who were directly involved and I have myself been at the Utøya camp as a young political activist. Who cares about detailed academic debates on transnational citizenship and European rights in times like these? I have thought about this question in the final stages of preparing this book. My conclusion is that all fact-based, balanced and engaged accounts of the current state of European politics must be welcome in this situation. Understanding the development of citizenship, rights, and identity is as important as ever. The politics of citizenship frame human beings in relation to political institutions. Mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion highlight the degree of openness and closure of political communities. The more we know about these issues, the easier it will be to maintain a sound and fair debate on immigration, identity, and human dignity in contemporary Europe. As a discursive interpretation of transnational citizenship in the EU, this book is one small contribution to the academic and political debates on these issues. The journey of this book started in December 2003 when my friend and later colleague Agustín José Menéndez encouraged me to apply for a doctoral position at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Italy. I thought this would be a nonstarter but it turned out I was wrong. At the EUI, I was fortunate to be able to work with Friedrich Kratochwil as a supervisor and mentor on the dissertation that this book is based on. His incisive comments bear an important footprint also on this book although he has not been directly involved this time around. I have been privileged to work at Arena—Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo in the four years since I left Florence and the EUI. Arena is a highly stimulating and diverse research institution that is a constant source of inspiration. Thanks to good colleagues and an efficient administration, Arena is a good place to do research. I thank them
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all for the good and interesting times in the past few years. None mentioned, none forgotten. In preparing the book I have been fortunate to have Marie-Claire Antoine as my editor with Continuum. I thank her and two anonymous referees for comments. Marie-Claire is a forthcoming editor who answers any question, no matter how stupid it may be, with efficiency and clarity. I must also thank Haakon Ikonomou for valuable research assistance in the final stages of preparing the manuscript. Life is not all about writing books and academic papers. I am fortunate to have a fantastic family to come home to each day. My wife Silje and our two sons Teodor and Nilas are always there to support me. They endure my mood swings, absent-minded moments, and occasional evenings in the office with a smile and for that they deserve my eternal gratitude! This chapter of my academic life is now finally over and after a brief respite they might have to endure yet others. Knowing that they are always there to cheer me on and make me laugh makes it easy to go into new projects for the future. Espen D. H. Olsen Oslo, Norway September 8, 2011
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Introduction: The Challenge of European Citizenship
“Ever Closer Union!” “Postnational Europe!” When the Treaty on European Union (TEU) was signed in 1991 after lengthy negotiations, it contained not only extensive changes in policy areas that the new Union would take up; it also created “Citizenship of the Union.” Despite the rather dry and formalistic language of the Treaty provisions on citizenship, this was heralded as a major stepping stone toward a more democratic and legitimate EU. Not only that, prominent actors in political elites, EU institutions, and among academics argued that the construction of citizenship “beyond the nation-state” amounted to new postnational era in European politics (see e.g. Curtin 1997; Gerstenberg 2001; Habermas 1996; 1998; 2000; Preuss 1998a). Finally, they argued, citizenship—a defining feature of the modern state—was to throw off the “shackles” of the nation-state. But the notion of citizenship in the EU also had its detractors. Theorists argued that to conceive of citizenship outside the framework of the nation-state was impossible (see e.g. Grimm 1995; Miller 1995; Shore 2004; Smith 1992). Not only that, citizens also reacted. The Danish “no” to the TEU in a referendum was widely attributed to dissent on the issue of further political integration, symbolically framed by European leaders and institutions in the idea of European citizenship.1 A central theme, then, of European integration in the past 20 years, the question of European citizenship is important, not only as part of a scholarly debate linking it to the broader question of political order in the EU, but also as a real-world phenomenon that affects the lives of citizens. As the primary organizing principle that relates individuals to a political community, citizenship is of unrivalled importance for the life chances of human beings on a national, regional, and global scale. The difference between citizens and noncitizens is most clearly visible in differences in the benefits and burdens that citizenship entails in concrete political practices. In the European context, this is especially important as individual rights are intimately linked with the overall aims of integration—whether they are market-oriented, political, or cultural.
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A unifying theme of European integration has been to fight the “excesses of nationalism” that plagued Europe in the two World Wars. In a postwar context of reconciliation and rebuilding, the European project of unification commenced with integrative measures pertaining to national economies and markets focusing on aims such as free movement and reduction of tax barriers. At the time of increasing migration flows in the 1960s and 1970s, European institutions brought in questions of identity, communal symbols, and genuine European elections. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Union became a reality and took on issues such as foreign and security policy and migration. In the last decade, the EU has enlarged to the East. And finally its institutions, member states, and citizens have addressed the question of “what are we?” as a political community in the drawn-out debates on a European constitution. This book deals with how conceptions of citizenship have developed parallel to this veritable transformation of the European integration project. Contrary to the vision of postnational citizenship, I argue that European citizenship is at its core a transnational construction with free movement rights and nationality as the main building blocks. Despite several decisive moments where changes in a more postnational direction were possible and even plausible given the historical developments of EU institutions and policies, European citizenship continues to this day to be framed around these core features.
Citizenship: European, National, or In-Between? The issue of citizenship is at the heart of any project of building political institutions. Historically, some notion of citizenship—of the membership, rights and duties of individuals, and collective identity in a given political community—has been present in constructions of viable polities (Heater 1999; Isin 2002; Magnette 2005). This is most evident in the Westphalian states system. Citizenship is a defining feature of modern states, on par with exclusive territoriality and sovereignty. Some have gone so far as to argue that states are inconceivable without citizenship, and citizenship is impossible without states (Arendt 1968). In this collective meaning, citizenship is continuously (re)constructed in political discourses which institutionalize identities, norms of membership, individual rights, and notions of participation. Consequently, in the history of political thought, models of citizenship have weighted such aspects differently. Of the three classical models of citizenship, liberal perspectives
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highlight civil rights (see e.g. Rawls 1985; 1993; Schuck 2002), communitarians emphasize membership in the prepolitical, cultural community (see e.g. Miller 1995; 2000; Taylor 1985; 1992), and lastly republicanism is the doctrine of active participation (see e.g. Bellamy 2001a; 2001b; van Gunsteren 1988). A more recent debate has brought about cosmopolitan theories which advocate the scaling down of state boundaries and human rights as the building bloc of global citizenship (see e.g. Falk 1994; Linklater 1998b; 1998c). The EU, however, clearly challenges both conventional ideas about citizenship in the traditional models and the precepts of “borderless” citizenship in cosmopolitanism. One cannot easily pin down a definite conception of European citizenship as either one type of statist citizenship or as a fundamental break with the intimate link between modern citizenship and the nation-state. The main reason for this is found in the mixed nature of the EU. It is a multilevel polity comprised of nationstates and European-level institutions. This is mirrored in the constant negotiation and tension in the EU setting between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism as different levels of governance (see e.g. Castiglione 2009). These are, moreover, also prevalent as political and academic understandings of the integration project. If we want to understand and explain citizenship politics in the EU, we must accommodate this constant tension between the European and the national.2 In other words, it does not suffice to rewrite old stories about citizenship struggles in the nation-state or to come up with “revolutionary” models of citizenship “beyond the nation-state.” While the EU is not a state, it has gone far beyond a “simple” international organization in most respects, not the least in its relationship to member state citizens. Individual rights were in place already in the founding treaties. Moreover, the issue of rights has been at the heart of the continuous efforts of the EU institutions to clarify the political and legal status of individuals as well as the ultimate aims of the integration project. The study of citizenship in the EU should, then, focus on the “inbetween” character of the integration project as a whole. This does not mean that we can rule out that the construction of citizenship in the EU has at times “copied” national traditions (Eder and Giesen 2001; Shore 2000), “uploaded” new institutional features on the EU level (Wiener 1998), or has been influenced by “experimentation” in new configurations of supranational (social) rights (Kostakopoulou 2001; Meehan 1993; Nanz 2006). Yet, I focus on this intersectional aspect as citizenship does not emerge in a void. It is always linked to concrete historical
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experiences and political practices. In the EU, this is visible in the initially tacit development of a system of European rights linked to the aims of market integration despite strong and diverging citizenship traditions in major member states such as France, Germany, and later Great Britain. When the cards were dealt anew so to say with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the European integration project turned “political” in its search for a Union, and previously “invisible” European citizenship projects became observable for the larger public as well as an issue for member state governments. With this decisive moment of Maastricht, European citizenship became “politicized” and linked to the understandings and traditions of citizenship in the member states. To make sense of citizenship discourse in such varied circumstances— from a mere “embryo” in early integration to an “institution” at Maastricht and beyond—I focus on membership, rights, participation, and identity as different elements of citizenship. As such, citizenship links individuals to some collective order. This does not necessarily need to be structured within a state, but citizenship does create a bounded legal and political space shaped by the rights and duties imparted to citizens of that given collective. Thus, citizenship would hold no meaning if it was devoid of a collective component (see Arendt 1968: 81–2; Walzer 1983: 34). On the general level, this collective component is obvious in that citizenship as a status is always given by someone to the individual in question. Defining citizenship in terms of its basic elements is fruitful because it directs our attention to how the status is established, consolidated, and changed in different political settings. Why these four elements? Notwithstanding its contested character, the core issues of citizenship have remained much the same in historical perspective (Heater 1999). Still, citizenship does not emerge in a void; it is always linked to concrete practices. It is, according to Nisbet (1974: 612), “more than simply a condition or status; it is a process, with identifiable phases in time and with contexts in history.” Emphasizing the historical character of citizenship also highlights its conceptual quality. As a concept, citizenship is invoked in various discourses which in the final instance affect it as a status. By focusing on citizenship as a concept that varies diachronically in time, and synchronically across polities, its specificities in given political settings can be ascertained empirically. I argue that these are linked to the intrinsically individual and collective characteristics of citizenship. The four elements cover such characteristics in different ways, but clearly highlight the interplay between the individual and the collective features of citizenship politics.
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This is evident in the membership dimension which signifies who (as individuals) are seen as citizens of a given political unit (as a collective) and who are not through criteria of inclusion and exclusion. The content of citizenship is noticeable in the rights granted to citizens on the basis of membership, and the mode citizens’ participation derived from these rights as well as linked to certain duties of the status. Identity signifies the understanding of “we” as citizens and “they” as noncitizens, that is, the specification of “who we are” and “what distinguishes us from others” in terms of both individuals as part of a collective community and the community as such.3 Identity can thus be understood as a reflection on what a given political community entails and what sets its citizens apart from other citizens, not only through membership decisions, but also in terms of how the very community is conceived as such. The reasoning on the cross-cutting aspects of European citizenship and the utility of focusing on elements of citizenship also provide foundations for an argument on the issue of institutional design and historical developments in European integration. The distinctive characteristics of European citizenship are often related to categories typical of the integration process as a whole. Concretely, it is frequently claimed to be a misnomer in the language of citizenship as it is incongruent with the triptych of citizen, nation, and state (see e.g. Shore 2004: 29; Smith 1992: 62), or that genuine political citizenship is only possible within the nation-state frame (see e.g. Aron 1974: 642–3; Miller 1995: 162–3). Contrary to this “no demos” view, European citizenship is also frequently addressed as having predominantly supranational features which implies the forging of a comprehensive system of directly applicable rights on the EU level (see e.g. Dobson 2007; Kostakopoulou 2001; Meehan 1993), or postnational qualities which point to the delinking of rights from nationality (see e.g. Curtin 1997; Gerstenberg 2001; Habermas 1996; 1998; 2000). The vexing issue of European citizenship after it was institutionalized in the Maastricht Treaty was what impact this would have on EU institutions, supranational democracy, and domestic politics. This question goes to the core also of general debates on citizenship in a globalized world. It is, therefore, not surprising that the meaning of citizenship in the EU has been a hotly contested issue. As a category of political order, citizenship has existed since the definition of political community in Greek antiquity (Magnette 2005: 7). Given this linkage to the issue of political community, it is often imbued with a strong normativity, that is, a focus on what it should be, rather than what it is in theoretical and empirical terms. This book provides a discursive perspective on the development
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of European citizenship. Rather than taking a basic (normative) model of citizenship as a starting point, I seek to shed light on the specificities of gradual developments, sudden shifts, and reforms in European citizenship politics. The book searches for the specific details of citizenship elements and their interlinkage rather than their fit with models of citizenship. This links up with the idea that we should seek to understand the EU in terms of the real consequences of political practices on basic concepts, policies, and institutions, rather than search for evidence of “the Union . . . as a new dimension of power fated to take over from the states as they did from the cities and feudal structures” (Magnette 2007: 665). In terms of citizenship, by eschewing such teleological reasoning, “[t]ransnational aspects . . . bridge these cleavages rather than level them out. They emerge in the crossing of territorial borders and in the extension of rights beyond membership of political communities” (Bauböck 1994: 3). I show how citizenship in the EU—while exhibiting multilevel and international configurations of membership and rights—continues to be tied to particular political communities rather than to “Europeanness” or universal human rights. The concept of “transnational”4 links, then, to the mixed nature of citizenship in the EU; it is simultaneously affected by developments on the EU level as such, an issue of contention between EU institutions and member states, and has an import for horizontal relations between member states. This stands, however, in stark contrast to the view of European citizenship as a possible panacea for the democratic deficit in the EU. Such views were prevalent among both academics and politicians in the aftermath of Maastricht.5 Citizenship was seen as deliberate attempt at institutional design that would foster political participation on the European level and strengthen citizens’ identity with EU institutions. Indeed, the EU is often held to be a potent laboratory for experimentation in institutional design (Eriksen 2009).6 The democratic deficit is, however, still lamented as a major problem in EU governance. Moreover, citizens tend to show increasing dissatisfaction with the integration project. Recent referenda rejecting constitutional overtures and subsequent “rescue operations” are cases in point. As a corollary to such continuing challenges of European integration, this book demonstrates that “old” understandings of citizenship as linked to political community prevail. Transnational citizenship in the EU continues to this day to be linked more to market integration than the idea of European democracy. I argue in this book that citizenship developments in the EU are therefore premised on the “fate” of the initial choices made in the founding treaties. Far from an act of
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deliberate institutional design—free movement rights were pushed by Italy who had a huge surplus of workers on their shore (Maas 2005b)— these decisions continue to have a lasting impact on the contents and possibilities of European citizenship.
Path Dependence and Critical Junctures of European Citizenship I demonstrate this argument in a detailed study of citizenship discourse from the founding treaties of the EU until the most recent effort of constitution-making in the Convention on the Future of Europe. Concretely, the book focuses on political processes, debates, and discourses in the main European institutions that relate to the issue of citizenship. Given the historical aspect of this book, I utilize process tracing to tell the story of lasting transnational features of European citizenship. My usage of process tracing links up with recent calls in political science to take time and temporality seriously in our endeavors to understand and explain political behavior, institutions, or concepts (see e.g. Abbott 2001; Davis 2005; George and Bennett 2005; Pierson 2004). The argument that European citizenship is transnational implies that other conceptions do not suffice for our understanding of how citizenship has been transformed over the course of European integration. Throughout the book, I therefore address alternative explanations and why these do not hold against the main argument of the book. Crucially, in explaining why European citizenship has not become a postnational “beacon” in regulating relations between individuals and supranational political institutions, I bring the domestic level in by focusing both on successful and failed reform proposals, and the discursive resilience of “nationality” in citizenship politics. While supranational institutions like the Commission, the European Parliament (EP), and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) have been important in pushing the general agenda for individual rights linked to the integration project, member states have been crucial at decisive moments in the process. For instance, Italy put the issue of free movement at the forefront of the Paris Treaty (1951) and Spain introduced the idea of explicit citizenship in the run-up to the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on Political Union in Maastricht (1991). Conversely, more “euroskeptic” member states such as Denmark and the United Kingdom have argued strongly against the strengthening of supranational rights and the forging of citizenship especially after the TEU.
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In research on historical processes of political development, the issues of long-lasting institutional arrangements and their “stickiness” against sudden and fundamental change are frequently conceptualized as instances of path dependence and critical junctures. The notion of path dependence draws attention to initial choices and how these matter significantly for the explanation of paths and institutional outcomes (Mahoney 2000; Pierson 2004). In the EU, the founding treaties of Paris (1951) and Rome (1957) are distinct starting points for institutional development. These historical occasions provided decisive moments in setting basic principles, aims, and institutions of European integration, many of which still animate EU politics. Starting with these first two treaties, I analyze EU citizenship politics by highlighting what Pierson (2004: 21) has called “branching patterns” of historical development; the shaping of developmental trajectories through initial decisions, which consequently prove difficult to reverse or radically change.7 The relative importance of citizenship elements (say, rights over participation) or the institutional setting (say, national or supranational) is in this approach not taken for granted. In doing so, the notion of path dependence is utilized in a different way than has been the case in work that has taken a diachronic approach to explain the development of European citizenship (see e.g. Kostakopoulou 2001; Maas 2007; Meehan 1993; Shaw 2007; Wiener 1998). In this book, special emphasis is put on rights issues in the founding treaties and how these created knock-on effects that have permeated the individual/EU institutions nexus of European integration. In addition, I focus on the critical junctures of the process where distinctive reform proposals and different options for change in European citizenship were possible and plausible (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007: 352). By probing options for reform, equilibria, and paths not taken in this way, I strengthen the narrative account of how European citizenship has developed over the course of more than 50 years. The process-tracing approach does, then, not impose current understandings of citizenship on the rights issues evident at the outset of European integration. These did obviously not create anything akin to full-blown citizenship. Yet, I argue, they are crucial to our understanding of the conceptual origins and political developments that have culminated in European citizenship over the last two decades. Consequently, by tracing the development of a status of individuals related to EU institutions initially built on free movement rights in the founding treaties, this book highlights the move from member state nationals as rights-holding
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legal subjects and economic actors to explicit European citizens after the Maastricht Treaty.
A Note on Methods In European integration, critical junctures are often attributed to the “big bangs” of Treaty change at IGCs (Beach 2005; Keohane and Hoffmann 1991; Moravcsik 1998) or exemplified by the recent efforts at deliberate constitution-making, for instance, in the Convention on the Future of Europe (Eriksen et al. 2004; Fossum and Menéndez 2004; Walker 2005). Yet European integration is more multifaceted than these accounts suppose. Clearly, day-to-day policy and law-making in EU institutions continually supplement the overarching Treaty framework and serve to expand the scope of European politics (Cram 1997; Jachtenfuchs 2001; Peterson 1995; Pierson 1998). Indeed, such expansion has increasingly linked the EU to individual citizens and has highlighted questions and problems of citizenship such as the scope of European rights, elections to the EP, free movement, and European identity. I focus, therefore, on both these levels in analyzing the trajectory of citizenship discourse in the EU. As citizenship establishes the status of individuals in relation to political community, it evidently registers with the proverbial “polity” question of European integration. This has been evident in different instances and efforts of “constitution-making” in the EU. Key examples are the Spinelli Project in the European Parliament (EP) (1984), the Maastricht Process (1991–92), and the Convention on the Future of Europe (2002–03). Concretely, these instances focused not only on institutional issues, but also on problems and questions that are directly or indirectly linked to European citizenship; such as rights, democracy, and European identity. Moreover, I present evidence not only on these “single photographs” but also on the “moving pictures” (Pierson 1998: 30) of European integration. As such, the book interprets the effects on citizenship from policy debates, ECJ jurisprudence, and high-profile committees that dealt with the place of individuals and identity linking to broader issues of integration. Before presenting the structure of the book some further points on the evidence and sources of the book are warranted. In explaining the transnational character of European citizenship and its relative inertia against alternative conceptions and political projects, I rely on interpretive evidence. Concretely, this means that I have sought to ascertain the
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content of relevant Treaty provisions, policies, policy documents, reform proposals, and actors’ perceptions on citizenship at given instances over the course of European integration. Some of these data sources are selfevident as they have dealt explicitly with the issue of citizenship, while others have been scrutinized as a result of new avenues for interpretation that became observable from the process tracing. As such, I have therefore employed a pragmatic approach to data collection, rather than a strict ex ante design linked to selecting on a few predesignated independent variables. I have moreover cross-checked my interpretation of given sources with other sources and secondary accounts where these have been available. In assessing whether the “story” told about the trajectory of European citizenship in this book is valid and reliable, traditional epistemological criteria of “rigor” and “parsimony” may, then not be very fruitful. What instead is important is to focus on completeness and coherence or followability (Gallie 1968). In this sense, “the crucial question is whether or not anything relevant has been left out” (Kratochwil 2006: 7). Thus, in probing the emergence, consolidation, and changes to European citizenship, the burden of proof is on making good of each (potential) “turn” of citizenship politics: of cataloguing the range of instances where the conception of citizenship has been or, just as importantly, could have been affected significantly.
Outline of the Book In Chapter 1, I focus on the period from the institutional advent of European integration in the ECSC (1951) to the beginning of debates on political union in the 1970s. In this period, citizenship was not an explicitly used concept in EU politics. Yet, this chapter provides an important introduction to EU citizenship politics as certain Treaty principles, policies, and ECJ rulings invoked issues and elements of importance for the individuals and their rights vis-à-vis European institutions. As such, this chapter also provides the first empirical concretization of the claim that European citizenship is predominantly a transnational status. Indeed, the chapter highlights how rights and a notion of participation linked to free movement and nondiscrimination based on nationality as “foundational” principles of European integration provided a frame upon which later conceptions would be constructed. In addition, a main argument in this chapter is that this “right to have rights” that incrementally developed as a consequence of the gradual expansion of free movement was based on individuals being nationals of the member states.
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The “embryonic” form of citizenship soon gave way to debate on explicit issues linked to citizenship, such as rights, identity, and elections in European integration. These developments are charted in Chapter 2. The main focus of the chapter is on the attempts at “politicization” of citizenship in a time when Europe faced economic crisis and a redefinition of the aims of integration two decades after the unification process started. In so doing, the chapter highlights that while voting rights in European elections was a major innovation in supranational “citizenship making,” other reform efforts and debates remained largely within the transnational frame laid down by the founding treaties. Interestingly, the effort to declare “the European identity” did not become a building block of supranational identity between citizens. It was rather a foreign policy tool. Identity was an implicit issue in relations between citizens and European institutions, where the emphasis also in this period was very much on making sense of cross-border activities through the idea of a passport union and the “special” rights of European citizens. In contrast to the focus on day-to-day policy-making, Chapter 3 analyzes the constitution-making effort of the first directly elected EP in the beginning of the 1980s, the so-called Spinelli Project. In the end, this project did not succeed. The member states refused to take up the constitutional mantle. Still, the Spinelli Project marks an important moment in European citizenship discourse. It was the first time that elected European politicians linked citizenship and constitution in the framing of European integration. Moreover, it did provide the impetus for Treaty reform that was to come with the SEA. Concretely, the analysis of this chapter focuses on the debates within the committee designated to come up with institutional reforms and in plenary sessions. A main argument in the chapter is that the constitution-makers of the Spinelli Project favored a predominantly political conception of citizenship based on active citizen participation. Yet, I also demonstrate how this political citizenship was based on nationality in terms of membership, a notion that was settled relatively early in the process and remained uncontested. Indeed, the issue of nationality seems to have moderated the federalist views of several Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). By highlighting these aspects, I underline empirically how even ardent federalists in the EP in the end “scaled down” their initially sanguine proposals on rights and citizenship, and focused on citizenship mainly as a by-product of incremental policy-making regarding, for instance, the Internal Market. In Chapter 4, I focus on the revival of the idea of a “borderless Europe” in the aftermath of the constitution-making attempt of the EP. More
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concretely, it starts out with the process around the first major revision of the Treaty framework for European integration, the Single European Act (SEA). The main argument of the chapter is that in the effort of reviving integration, European institutions “cemented” a notion of the transnational market citizen which had in fact been “in the making” since the first treaties. While not a part of EU law at the outset, the chapter also highlights that the ideas and principles behind the Schengen Agreement, which sought to abolish internal borders in Europe, were closely wedded to the aim of reviving European market integration. The theme of a Europe of “no borders” is concluded with a brief discussion of free movement legislation in the end of the 1980s that focused to a great extent on residence rights. As such, the chapter ends by probing issues that would become even more evident in European citizenship discourse after the Maastricht Treaty: nationality versus residence as the deciding marker for membership and rights, and the competing conceptions of market and political citizenship. The IGC on Political Union—or the Maastricht Process—is a central moment not only in the history of European integration but also in the story about European citizenship. It was the first instance where the concept of citizenship was explicitly addressed and debated by all the main EU institutions and member state governments. How citizenship became an explicit part of the Maastricht Treaty and its linkage to preceding rights developments and identity discussions are analyzed in Chapter 5. As the issue of citizenship was raised within the context of the larger question of what kind of political union one could forge on the supranational level in Europe, debate on this issue was saturated by a plethora of ideas and proposals. This chapter therefore highlights, not only evidence that confirm the transnational core of European citizenship; it also probes the alternative conceptions and reform proposals that emerged in the debates on political union and how these would potentially have challenged the transnational “lock-in” of citizenship politics in Europe. The image of political struggle—evident through competing conceptions and reform proposals—continues in Chapter 6 that analyzes the citizenship politics that followed in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty and the initial failure of ratification in Denmark. The focus of the chapter is on the debates on the proper understanding of what European citizenship meant, for political integration on the EU level and vis-à-vis national citizenship institutions. The chapter highlights that the question of “who decides on individual membership and why?” was left with only one
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answer in the immediate post-Maastricht developments of declaratory statements and treaty amendments: the single nation-state. Thus, the dependent character of European citizenship was upheld as its defining feature seen in relation to national citizenship institutions and the member states. In this chapter, analysis therefore turns on the degree to which different competing conceptions of citizenship emerged in this period and the reasoning behind following the previously developed transnational conception of citizenship in the EU. In Chapter 7, analysis turns to the effort of explicit EU constitutionmaking in the Convention on the Future of Europe. This complex process is important as the Convention was a mixed body that included representatives of member state governments, national and European parliamentarians, members of the Commission, as well as representatives of the then candidate countries for accession to the EU. As such, the Convention serves as the final, most comprehensive “prism” through which we can understand the meaning of European citizenship. As the constitutional element of the process in the end was scaled down and ratification failed, this chapter will concentrate to a large extent on radical reform proposals pertaining to citizenship. In so doing, it will spell out the alternative trajectories that such proposals proffered and how this would have changed the meaning of European citizenship. As these reform proposals in the end were not followed up by the Convention, this chapter serves as a final corroboration of the main argument of the book: that citizenship in the EU is transnational. In Chapter 8, the transnational argument of the book is utilized in a broader discussion of the “multilevel” character of European citizenship. The chapter draws on the empirical findings of the previous seven chapters, and highlights the constant tension in EU citizenship discourse between what can be called European projects and national traditions. Through this focus the chapter highlights and appraises the path dependent character of European citizenship and the resilience of nationality as one of its “founding” principles. As such, this chapter also underscores the “normality” of constitutional politics on citizenship in the EU: despite radical reform proposals pointing in the direction of a stronger supranational and postnational European citizenship, the path dependency of transnational conceptions prevailed in the final instance also in EU constitution-making. The chapter ends by expanding on the overarching theme of the book—transnational citizenship in the EU—by providing a critical perspective on how scholars and practitioners alike might well take more care in understanding the nuances of EU politics
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as a multilevel phenomenon marked by constant confrontation and conciliation between projects, ideas, and conceptions on the EU and member state levels. Based on this synthesis, the concluding chapter summarizes the book’s main findings, and discusses unanswered issues and prospects for future research. Finally, it ends on a “speculative” note on future conjectures on the development of European citizenship, taking recent debates and developments such as the financial crisis, renationalization, and dissent against further integration, as well as Eastern enlargement, and the failure of the constitutional project as starting points.
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Chapter 1
The Founding Decades
When the “group of six”1 established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, no-one could have foreseen an EU of 27 member states, with a directly elected EP, wide-reaching policies, and a common currency.2 For sure, we can imagine that they would also not have anticipated all the talk about European citizenship that has emerged after Union citizenship was institutionalized in the Maastricht Treaty (1992). Still, the European project of unification was something different in the history of international organizations already from its modest, sectoral beginnings. Already the choice of “community” over other concepts such as “association” or “organization” signified common interests and ideas that would go beyond mere economic cooperation (Dinan 2004). In the aftermath of two wretched wars in two generations, European leaders, federalists, and political entrepreneurs created a community of states which would bring political institutions and “citizens” closer together. The exclamation marks on “citizens” here are not coincidental. In fact, they go to the core of this book. In what ways have European institutions related to individual citizens, to the “groundworkers” of the integration project? Indeed, this chapter shows how member state citizens turned out to be important pieces in the puzzle that would be European unification. From the onset, integrationists acknowledged the strong symbolism and practical consequences of borders between states. This is important as the modern vocabulary of citizenship has been intimately connected to the nation-state, a vocabulary that further relates to the understanding of territorial borders and communal boundaries of the political as stable and fixed (Migdal 2004: 16). Consequently, free movement across borders would be a central theme of the negotiations on the ECSC Treaty. In the end, this vision would also include citizens—or workers—after the Italian government pushed for this toward the end of the negotiations (Maas 2007).
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When European integration finally became a reality, the institutional setup and policy approach was geared toward the dual aim of integrating previous enemies through the pooling of sovereignty and upholding national independence (see Dinan 2004; Moravcsik 1998). Yet, the specific institutional and policy-oriented approaches would have a strong impact on the developments of European institutions in the first two decades of integration. Thus, although European integration at the outset was about the “high politics” of institutional integration, market building, and political interdependence, it would also have an impact on issues outside the restricted domains of the first communities. The evolving and dynamic character of European integration was evident already in its first phase, and it is, therefore, crucial to investigate how the status of individuals was framed within the founding treaties and subsequent political and judicial developments. In so doing, this chapter highlights how international treaties are not static texts: they are always working within given contexts. Hence, while the ECSC Treaty was limited in the scope of policies it covered, it would raise certain issues that already at the outset went beyond “coal and steel” integration. Fundamental issues were at stake. When devising a framework for integrating previous enemies, these adversaries sought solutions that could not be easily disbanded because of enduring interests or fleeting power struggles. To use Wiener’s (2008) nice phrase, there was already in the first Treaty an “invisible constitution of politics” that would be the starting point of later efforts of further integration and of linking citizens with supranational institutions. Indeed, Maas (2005b: 985, 997) has shown that arguments over European rights were present at the beginning of European integration, and even predated the negotiations on the ECSC Treaty. This chapter charts, therefore, the minuscule elements of citizenship and individual rights that were constructed in the first two treaties. It traces citizenship in the Treaty texts and how such issues were later interpreted by the ECJ as fundamental for the status of individuals in relation to European institutions. Finally, the chapter shows how the early issues of basic principles for the functioning Community was concretized in remarkable policy-making on the issue of free movement some 20 years after the launch of European integration in Paris. The main argument that is developed through the empirical analyses of these critical junctures is that, in overall terms, the embryonic and incipient conceptions of citizenship evident in the founding treaties provided the frame upon which later conceptions were constructed and developed. In other words, if we want to understand the potential and limits of European
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citizenship in a transformed Union we must start with the origins of integration itself.
Integrating Coal and Steel Markets: Whither Citizenship? The ECSC Treaty signed in Paris (1951) marks the institutional advent of European integration. Through this treaty, the BeNeLux, France, Germany, and Italy sought to create a single market in coal and steel (Dinan 2004: 52). At the outset, this integrative effort was thus highly sectoral and limited, both in political and territorial terms. While limited in sectoral reach, the ECSC Treaty was still rather comprehensive in laying out the historical and political foundations for such a community. It stated aims of the ECSC such as “maintenance of peaceful relations,” “the establishment of common bases for economic development,” and to increase “the standard of living and . . . furthering the works of peace.” Finally, it stated that historic rivalries were to be counteracted “by creating an economic community, the foundation of a broad and independent community among peoples, . . . and giving direction to their future common destiny.” Obviously one must be careful of exaggerated interpretation regarding “lofty” considerations in a preamble. Still, it is important to note that the limited fields of coal and steel led to such towering assertions of the “rationale” behind integration. What does the “high politics” of peace and international cooperation have to do with citizenship? It is a well-known fact in the history of European integration that the “founding fathers” foresaw a more comprehensive future Community or Union. While this supranational vision did not necessarily have to include individual rights and discussion on identity, it was clear that it proffered an institutional system and a set of basic principles that would go beyond the template for “classic” international organizations or regimes. This would have lasting effects, not only on institutional developments of European integration, but also on individual citizens. While European leaders foresaw an expanding Community and binding rules and institutions, there was no direct assertion of citizenship in the ECSC Treaty. What would constitute membership and linkage to European institutions and laws for member state citizens was not part of the equation at this point in time. In fact, there was furthermore no direct reference even to rights of individuals that could emanate from the Treaty. Against this backdrop, Neunreither (1995: 5) claimed that the ECSC represented “European integration without the citizens.” Still, a
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central argument of this book is that citizenship develops not only as a result of “explicit” citizenship policies, but also as a consequence of political, cultural, and legal practices that frame norms of membership, the scope of rights, notions of identity, and modes of participation for individuals. Based on a contextualized reading of the Treaty one can therefore discern an already present notion of individual citizens and their rights under the remit of supranational integration. While this was not comprehensive or perhaps even anticipated by its signatories and “founding fathers,” the history of citizenship shows that demarcations of political communities can take many forms. Isin (2002) highlights how citizenship historically has been marked by struggles over its content (rights and obligations) and scope (criteria for inclusion). While citizenship struggle is not the word one would choose to portray the negotiations on the ECSC, they were marked by extensive debate on the scope of free movement (Maas 2007). This was in the end extended also to individuals as market participants. Hence, to the extent that individuals were accorded a status within the framework of the treaty, it was primarily in the capacity of consumers, workers or producers.3 It seems obvious that within the prevailing understandings of citizenship at the time these roles would not be seen as part of citizenship. To be sure, the skepticism of Aron (1974) concerning even the conceptual possibility of European citizenship as something similar to the national counterpart would possibly have rung even more true in 1951. I nevertheless argue that while the modicum of free movement rights in the ECSC Treaty were in no way comparable to nation-state citizenship, they created the impetus for a discourse on citizenship-related issues that have lasted to this day of postconstitutional crisis management. The ECSC Treaty did, then, activate issues of citizenship. The thrust of provisions on individuals in the Treaty is found in Article 69. This refers to the renouncement of employment restrictions based on nationality for workers in the coal and steel industries. Hence, the lofty assertions of promoting peace did not foster any direct assertion of measures to integrate member state citizens further. There was no explicit notion of a European identity common to citizens of diverse nation-states. The Treaty dealt explicitly with the status of individuals in their limited capacity as potential workers in a clearly defined sector of production and market transactions. The basis for individual membership under the ECSC thus emerged as an effect of other elements: it was linked, not to formal membership criteria, but to participation as a prospective individual activity, sectorally defined and circumscribed.
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The rights attached to this status as a limited “coal and steel workercitizen” were further meant to facilitate what the Treaty referred to as “movement of labor.” The dominance of mobility in the construction of rights and citizenship in European integration is a central theme of this book. Important as this was in the vision of a Europe where borders would be less essential and permeable by the interests of peaceful cooperation between previous enemies, it is to this day at the core of European individualism and conceptions of citizenship (Somek 2008). The practice of the individual citizen that transcends national borders is key to policy-making, identity debates, and the European economy. The theme of mobility is furthermore important in theoretical terms, as the possibility to move freely across national boundaries constituting the reach of state jurisdiction and citizenship rights can be interpreted as the so-called “abolition of the disabilities of alienage” (Preuss 1998a: 145). Being an alien—a noncitizen—is then no longer such a precarious status given that rights of free movement to some extent “trump” the state’s exclusive right to deny the access of foreigners to its territory. But, given the clearly limited character of movement provisions under the ECSC, this cannot be interpreted as the backbone of a genuine citizenship status cross-cutting national citizenship institutions and territorial jurisdictions. The free movement provision inherent in Article 69 of the ECSC Treaty was even stated under the heading “movement of labour,”4 rather than, say, “free movement of persons” which would have signified a broader curbing of the traditional exclusiveness of states in terms of territorial control. Hence, while not comparable to national citizenship in any way, the ECSC Treaty created a citizenship “embryo” in European integration. Participation as workers through the exercise of free movement led to a minuscule status of rights-holding citizens. Moreover, this was related not only to European institutions, but also to member states of the Community. Hence, elements of citizenship already in the ECSC Treaty were dynamically interconnected in generating a thin status for individuals. While not widely acknowledged in EU scholarship,5 this “embryo” would prove strong and worthy of continued life.
The Treaty of Rome: The Market Citizen Appears The European Economic Community (EEC) would build on the embryonic conception of European citizenship from the ECSC based on abolishing restrictions on nationality regarding the movement of workers
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across state boundaries. The designation of the new community as “economic” in the Treaty of Rome rather than confined to two narrow sectors in the previous treaty clearly signified the widened scope of institutionalized European integration. In fact, on the back of the failure regarding the European Political Community in 1954 (see Griffiths 2000), one of the priorities of that process was retained: the establishment of a common market in Europe (Dinan 2004: 64). This more complete vision of economic integration and the broader scope of integration would have further ramifications for citizenship in European integration. The more comprehensive scope of integration in the Treaty of Rome is evident in its preamble. The “loftiness” of the preceding treaty was retained, however, with a somewhat different slant to it. It reiterated the aims of fostering peace through “eliminating the barriers which divide Europe,” by “constantly improving the living and working conditions of their [the member states’] peoples,” and finally “to strengthen the safeguards of peace and liberty.” What is further striking about the preamble in terms of citizenship is the emphasis on integration, not only between member state citizens as such, but also the determination to establish “an ever closer union among the European peoples.”6 This did by no means bring the single citizen to the forefront of the aims of European integration. Still, the focus on peoples, rather than merely states, signaled a direct link between the institutions of the integrative process and individual citizens. This was, therefore, not mediated exclusively through the member state level. In this sense, European integration signified something more than a simple international treaty or regime. European leaders did, then, understand the Treaty to have effects for the collectives of individuals underpinning the nation-states in terms of community and legitimacy. It is thus not surprising, notwithstanding the lack of focus on integration among citizens as such, that issues pertaining to citizenship were scattered throughout the Treaty of Rome. Again, the prevailing image is one of a focus on citizens as workers and producers.7 Yet, there was some development compared to the ECSC. The Treaty explicitly stated in Article 7 that “any discrimination on the grounds of nationality shall hereby be prohibited,” without specifying the specific circumstances to which this principle would apply.8 The principle of nondiscrimination was thus wider in scope—at least in terms of the exact wording of the provision—than a narrow focus on proscribing such measures for specific groups, such as workers. The designation of membership, the criteria for who were seen as members and on what basis, were thus not straightforward in the Treaty
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of Rome. On the one hand, it is clear that it established the individual as meaningful within the framework of European integration in his/her capacity as a worker, albeit on a general level. Membership was related to participation contingent on the crossing of political borders. Workers within the common market were still the primary actors “on the ground” also in the Treaty of Rome. Without the primacy of such work-related participation through market-oriented rights there would be no activated rights status of individuals under the EEC. On the other hand, the broad wording of the general article on nondiscrimination points to a tension between a conception of the “worker-citizen” and an individual citizen to be protected from discrimination on the basis of his/her nationality per se. There thus seems to have been a tension inherent in the Treaty between the practical and functional focus on market integration and the more general “vision” of overcoming the national divisions of the two wars. While this would not have important implications immediately, this conflict was a precursor to later, more explicit (constitutional) debates on how far one could extend European rights and identity issues without diminishing the status of national citizenship. Individual rights provisions were linked to the principle of free movement.9 This was clearly related to the notion of workers as the primary individual actors in European integration. Still, it was not a universal principle. First, the right was bestowed on member state nationals only. Secondly, free movement could be curtailed by arguing for reasons of public order and public safety. Grounding European rights on prior national membership as well as emphasizing exceptions to the principles of free movement and free right of establishment based on such reasons underline that there were no explicit state-aspirations inherent in the Treaty foundation of the EEC. When theorizing types of boundaries involved in “polity-making” in modern Europe, Bartolini (2006: 7–13, 28) has underlined that the limits surrounding market transactions can be seen as fringes, that is, rather malleable boundaries subject to on-going developments of market relations and practices, while politico-administrative units are delineated by more settled borders. Thus, the principle regarding free movement of persons that was to facilitate a common European market through the “abolishment” of the fringe boundaries between national markets could cut across the borders of politico-administrative units previously holding exclusive jurisdiction over national territory. In light of the pervasiveness—in theoretical and practical terms—regarding the unitary character of modern nation-states encompassing citizenship, identity, political institutions, and territory, principles “overriding” these
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interlocking boundaries were clearly powerful. Ultimate decisions about citizenship did, however, remain national, perhaps due to the persistent frontiers of states in the final instance: “Territorial integrity of states is a deeply entrenched norm in the international state system” (Bauböck 2003: 8). Moreover, the potential challenge to the link between citizens and political units from free movement was clearly thwarted by the onus on economic integration and market-making in the EEC. The range of rights linked to free movement did not entail a deep “intrusion” into the political territory of member states, as if they had been complemented, say, by political rights. In addition, the emphasis that exceptions could be made by reference to reasons of public order and public safety clearly show that there was no vocabulary ready at the time of the Treaty of Rome to challenge the ultimate boundaries of states and thus of national citizenship institutions. The answer, then, to “who are the Europeans?” in the Treaty of Rome was obviously not the democratic citizen as a participant in a political community, but rather the individual-as-worker and market participant. As Preuss (1998b: 11) points out, “[t]he political term citizen was thoroughly alien to the wording of the original Treaty.” There was no clear notion of a broader identity transcending the links generated by integrating markets, common institutions, and legal framework on the European level. It is unsurprising that the construction of citizenship in the first treaties was fully linked with the aims of market integration. It is nevertheless striking that the market impetus of linking member state citizens, new European institutions, and binding supranational law continues to be at the core of European citizenship to this day. While the “transformation” of Europe (read: widening, deepening, and political union) in the last half decade or so cannot be underestimated, market-oriented rights of free movement are still the main building blocks of citizenship in the EU. A core argument of this book is indeed that initial decisions on principles such as free movement and nondiscrimination based on nationality have framed later constructions and projects of citizenship “beyond the nation-state.” As such, the analysis of the last two sections has shown that the founding treaties can be seen as the starting point for fledgling integrative policies and practices related to citizenship that would emerge in the 1960s and 1970s. Hence, I now turn to an assessment of the practice of the ECJ in interpreting and underlining the rights path of European integration as well as the implications of free movement legislation in this period and how this affected the conception of citizenship on the supranational level.
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ECJ: Raising the Stakes on European Rights The ECJ10 staked their claim as an important institution in the European architecture with its so-called seminal decisions in the 1960s establishing the basic principles of supremacy, direct effect, and protection of fundamental rights within the EU order (see e.g. Stein 1981: 3–4; Weiler 1999: 19–20). These decisions—and especially those on supremacy in Costa11 and direct effect in Van Gend en Loos12—were not brought to court only to adjudicate the status of individuals and citizenship rights. In terms of the subject matter, they focused primarily on specificities of the common market such as rights of establishment after the exercise of free movement in the former and customs duties in the latter. Yet, in these cases, the ECJ chose to enunciate principles which reached well beyond the technical minutiae of the cases as such. It can be argued, therefore, that the principles as such, and the practices which emanated from these cases signified the establishment of a direct link between the EU as a political unit with certain powers and individual citizens “formerly” linked only to their nation-states through citizenship. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, lawyers and politicians in the member states raised concerns over these principles as they infringed on national sovereignty (Alter 1998: 132). They did, however, not succeed in thwarting the principles that became cornerstones of “the constitutional evolution” of the EU (Stein 1981: 3). Looking at the two seminal cases of Van Gend en Loos and Costa, what is most clearly striking about ECJ judicial activism in the 1960s is the vigorous assertion of the EU as a legal system in its own right (MacCormick 1999: 113). In terms of investigating its impact on citizenship, the skeptic could argue that this does not tell us much, as ECJ jurisprudence in that period was primarily linked to judgments on the specificities of a common market rather than individual rights. But, Costa (2003: 740) points out that “[f]rom a legal point of view, European integration concerned the citizens at a very early stage.” From the vantage point of investigating European citizenship, then, the question is how this legal preoccupation with issues concerning individuals and their rights in the system “translated” into noteworthy contributions to citizenship politics in the Community. In Van Gend en Loos, the Court ruled that “Community law . . . confer upon [nationals of member states’] rights which become part of their legal heritage.” It further stated that these were rights “which national courts must recognize and enforce,” and emphasized that it has “direct
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effects in the relationship between Member States and their subjects.” In Costa, the emphasis was on the “precedence of Community law.” This was affirmed by the declaration that any European legal norm overrides national legislation in conflict with it (Weiler 1999: 20–1). Through these judgments, European law thus circumscribed the exclusive discretion of nation-states in relation to their citizens’ rights and obligations (Durand 1979: 3). In one sense, the judgments can be read as partial responses to the question of “who the Europeans are” and what binds them together in a community. In short, the ECJ answered people with European rights. This answer clearly highlights that the ECJ provided elements of a dynamic, albeit thin conception of European citizenship and identity through rights (see Evans 1984: 684). In terms of the subjects that the Court ruled would give rise to individual rights, they centered on aspects of the common market such as aid to companies or industrial sectors, monopolies, and the right of (commercial) establishment. The market vision of the founding treaties persisted. This does obviously not amount to a very “thick” notion of individual identity or citizenship within the Community. It was rather the assertion of principles regarding nondiscrimination and the direct effect of Community law for member states and thus for citizens that provided the thrust of affecting individuals under this new cooperative scheme. In this sense, the Court asserted a special kind of “Treaty citizenship” for Europeans. That is, a system of rights linked to the general aims and specific principles that saturated the Treaty framework. This legal conception of citizenship is visible in the broader political implications of integration on citizenship.13 The ECJ simply stated that supranational law could not ascribe duties (to follow European and not only national law) on individuals without also granting them certain rights against it (Stein 1981: 5). What is interesting from the vantage point of citizenship, furthermore, is the assertion that rights derived from the European level would have implications on the level of each nation-state in the system. The Community created a status that cuts across the borders of previously insulated legal-political systems in terms of membership and the scope of rights. In this sense, the conception of citizenship was not only linked to the European level as such, but to two levels: European and national. It was not just transnational in the sense of cutting across national boundaries, but also supranational through the creation of a direct link between European institutions and individual member state citizens: a link that was not present in the founding treaties. The horizontal and vertical
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dimensions of European citizenship were thus in place already as early as the mid-1960s. Indeed, this duality of citizenship rights has proven to be at the core of citizenship discourse ever since. Scholarly, much of the debate has surrounded around the issue of which is more important or influential on citizens as well as for our general understanding of what European integration is about. Is it the horizontal dimension linked to mobility and border-crossing, or rather the vertical one which proffers a more political notion of European citizenship with direct relations for citizens to European institutions? As always in debates on political developments and concepts, the answer is not definitive. Yet, already in this first chapter, it becomes apparent that the transnational dimension of European rights linked to mobility and protection against nondiscrimination in other member states than “one’s own” were at the crux of how European institutions, treaties, and lawyers related to the citizens of the member states. Insofar as the supranational dimension was important, it was always linked to the principled aims of the Treaty in terms of a common market and a Europe where borders between nation-states and their economies would be less pervasive and influential on individuals and societies. From this discussion, we see that the Court evidently brought issues regarding citizenship much more to the fore than was the case in the founding treaties. The citizenship elements of the treaties were mainly incipient and implicit; through the ECJ they were clearly more pronounced. The citizen was “established” as significant through European rights. In this sense, primacy was given to the dimension of rights in placing citizens within the system. From the ECJ judgments, it was further the case, and not surprisingly so, that individuals were given rights as a consequence of national citizenship. Thus, membership was based on the national level in terms of formal citizenship, but the European rights can also be interpreted as stipulating a kind of membership as an effect of other activated dimensions. Here, the jurisprudence of the Court clearly continued the predominant economic and market-oriented language of the treaties. This again illuminates that an issue such as membership—in addition to formal criteria on the national level—was also determined informally through the development of concrete rights that were related to participation in the common market. One should, however, be somewhat cautious in drawing too sweeping conclusions from this. Empirical research on the impact of these principles on the actual use of individual capacities to legal action, for instance, show that these have been utilized to a very small extent: “There is still
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today a persistent cleavage between the theoretical individual rights granted by EU integration and the rights that private individuals can actually benefit from” (Costa 2003: 744). As a result, empirical findings of this sort warn us of inferring, say, anything resembling democratic qualities from legal provisions on individual rights. Its scope was the private market actor, rather than the public political participant. In this manner, it did not significantly develop compared to the embryonic and marketoriented conceptions of the ECSC and EEC respectively. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that calling attention to the fact that the Community not only dealt with states, but also with individual citizens marked a significant shift insofar as it brought about fundamental questions regarding sovereignty and autonomy on the macrolevel, as well as its impact on the bearers of legitimacy in modern states: the individual citizens. Thus, through a more marked notion of membership, a supranational conception of citizenship emerged, creating the impetus for later discussions on European identity, culture, and citizenship.
Free Movement Legislation: From Principles to Policy As the analysis of the founding treaties of the Community and ECJ jurisprudence have highlighted, individual citizens were significant as workers with the potential to exercise the right of free movement. Undoubtedly, this emphasis on mobility, portable rights, and protection against discrimination based on nationality was strongly linked to the aim of economic integration in Europe. This is unsurprising as the thrust of integrating markets would require the removal of barriers— physical, economic, and cultural—against the dynamics of trade and efficient production. In a comprehensive study of the introduction of rights in European integration, Maas (2007) argues contrary to such an interpretation. His basic point is that European citizenship was not related to achieving a free European market since “citizenship makes markets less free because it forces governments to regulate the markets in order to satisfy rights” (ibid.: 6). Rights were in this interpretation linked to the “European idea” and not to market integration as I claim. But this reasoning seems to equate the “European idea” with political integration as an antithesis to market integration in Europe. Moreover, “citizenship” as a comprehensive European status was not at the core of European rights politics in the years building up to the ECSC Treaty. I will show how the idea of full-fledged citizenship would follow after (free movement)
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rights had been instituted and consolidated in the 1960s. What I argue is that already in the first two decades of integration, the basic principles of free movement and nondiscrimination became pillars of a more “fundamental” notion of citizenship rights linked to the institutions and policies of integration. As a “natural” extension of these principled debates on the “meaning” and scope of supranational integration would soon be followed less “dramatic” legislative measures regarding free movement. Hence, the foundation through treaties and legal struggles over their interpretation spurned more specific policy measures. Through creeping fashion, then, practices linked to individuals emerged within European integration. It is thus important to explore how such specific policies contributed to the framing of individuals and citizenship in the Community. Through abolishing boundaries between national markets as well as political entities, it was believed that not only would Europe prosper economically, but also peacefully (Haas 1958; see also Rosamond 2000: 50–68). However, as has been shown, the exact content and scope of free movement was not entirely clear in the Treaty of Rome. Subsequently, a series of legislative acts sought to underpin the principle with policy. In short, the policy measures—directives and regulations14—did so by affirming that the principle of free movement affected citizens primarily as workers and secondarily as spouses or families of these workers. The first major legislative act was Regulation 1612/68. This was a wide-ranging piece of legislation that in remarkable language underlined the principle of free movement for the idea and functioning of European integration. Interestingly, it stated in its “preamble” that “freedom of movement constitutes a fundamental right of workers and their families.” With the hindsight of ECJ case law, the member states signed off, as it were, on the “fundamentalization” of free movement for European workers. In so doing, the Council further linked the principle of free movement to the issue of guaranteeing “the possibility of improving his [the worker’s] living and working conditions and promoting his social advancement.” In this setting, the status of individuals was thus linked, not only to their potential participation in the common market, but also to their basic well-being. Interpreted widely, the wording of this regulation thus implies that the individual citizen—still primarily in his/her capacity as a worker—were not only to be seen as an end in him-/herself and but also a means for market integration. The assertion of the previously effective Regulation 38/64
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that the benefits of free movement were only to be granted to nationals of member states was, however, upheld. This was contrary to the radical proposals from the Commission and the EP that the right of free movement should be extended to refugees and stateless persons.15 Thus, it was unequivocally affirmed that European rights depended on prior national membership. This may seem self-evident from a nation-state perspective: why would the member states not protect their right to decide on membership also on the supranational level? Nevertheless, it was the starting point of a continuous conflict in European citizenship discourse. It is indisputable that the construction of citizenship rights outside the strict modality of national citizenship (one citizen, one nation, one set of rights) was and for some remains alien to the very idea of what citizenship can be about. Still, different European institutions, certain political leaders, and even some member states have from time to time defended a “denationalizing” vision of citizenship and rights in the European setting. In the 1960s, this vision was of course linked to market integration. This made sense, as markets are in principle not structured in accordance with norms of political membership, but rather by the ability of actors to buy, consume, and produce goods and services. In spite of this feature of market integration, the member states decided to employ an exclusionary understanding of access to European rights. The political importance of exclusive citizenship and national control over membership decisions thus trumped the transformative power of market integration on this score. The “nationality question” was, however, not the main objective of free movement legislation. Free movement rights were further underlined in Regulation 1251/70 which stated that postwork, citizens had a qualified right to remain in the territory where they had worked without being national citizens. European citizens were thus granted a kind of membership based on what could be called “qualified residence.” What qualified for rights enjoyed under European law was participation as workers, albeit increasingly linked to a broader conception of their worth qua individuals. This orientation was upheld by the subsequent Regulation 1408/71 which laid down the principles for harmonization of social rights in the wake of free movement of persons. Here, the focus was on facilitating free movement and mobility in Europe through transnationalizing certain social rights and benefits linked to work and family.
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In this sense, even though it was still the worker who was at the forefront of the relationship between European integration and the individual, a somewhat wider conception of citizenship slowly evolved. Individuals mattered not only as participating workers, but also to some extent as citizens who enjoyed certain fundamental rights as persons (see Durand 1979). This is further visible if we focus on the identity question of what binds citizens together in a community. Free movement legislation did not cast this question only in purely technocratic terms. Emphasizing that free movement was created for individuals as well as collectives— for the potential improvement of the individuals’ social (and economic) well-being—can be interpreted as an approximation of a European identity beyond the image of the worker or market actor. This is also evident in the importance granted to the need for “equality of treatment” based on ideas of the “freedom and dignity” of individual citizens, as in Regulation 1612/68. Obviously, these points cannot be interpreted as laying the ground for any thick and comprehensive form of identity comparable to those based on language, a common heritage, and history or ethnicity. It was rather indicative of a very thin conception of citizenship centered on the given scope of rights and participation; the worker remained at the forefront as the basis for European citizenship rights. But, as De Búrca (1995: 29) argues, “[i]n the face of the apparently overwhelmingly economic impetus of the Community, the language of fundamental rights offered potential to articulate and establish a place for other values.” Such values were, however, not pronounced inside free movement legislation. The rights of free movement and market participation dominant in the founding treaties were retained as basic elements. On this basis, the legislation outlined some measures that point to a widening of the status of individuals to include something more than simply their function as workers. This was primarily connected to a more fundamental status being accorded to rights of residence and equality of treatment in addition to free movement rights. Thus, the prior establishment of economic rights affected further rights, elements of belonging, and the designation of significant individuals related to the European institutions. It is interesting, then, that European integration after its initial phase in fact fostered more concrete conceptions of citizenship not only rooted in economically defined rights, but also ideas geared toward a political community, belonging, and participation, beyond the private sphere of the market.
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Conclusion By highlighting the empirical development of citizenship elements already in the first two decades of European integration, this chapter has offered evidence that contradicts Aron’s (1974) strong skepticism with regard to citizenship on another level than the nation-state. More concretely, it is clear that issues concerning citizenship throughout the first crucial years of integration in the postwar period were linked to the impetus of integrating markets in Europe. Consequently, member state citizens were “partners in integration” first and foremost as workers or consumers who took advantage of the idea of free movement, as (potential) participants in the common market. Rights were linked to this narrow inclusion of individuals in the mode of integration. In this sense, there was no clear notion of what European citizens would have in common, surpassing their function as so-called factors of production (Plender 1976: 39). To the small extent that identity issues were present, it was as a knock-on effect of changes in the scope of individual rights and prospective participation of individual citizens. The emergence of issues linked to citizenship clearly did not generate conceptions of a thick citizenship on the European level. Ultimately, in early European integration citizens were not perceived as directly taking part in a political project with further collective aims. The collective aim of peace in Europe was perceived to be attainable through market integration, not by the integration of citizens politically or culturally. In terms of the time frame, the vocabulary thus shifted from no explicit mentioning of rights in the treaties, via an acknowledgment of the link between citizens and the Community as a legal-political entity through certain rights, to a perception of these as fundamental for traversing previously exclusive borders, if not the ultimate frontiers of nation-states. These findings point to an increasing awareness of the citizens as persons already in the first phase of European integration. Still, the prevailing impression is, anyhow, one where the citizen in the initial phase of European integration was secondary to the aim of integrating states and peoples. The integration of workers and citizens was mainly a facilitator for the aim of market integration and peace-building in Europe. This is further highlighted by the fact that there were no duties to participation inherent in these conceptions of citizenship. The emphasis was always on how the political or collective unit—the Community—could foster participation in the common market. Again, this is indicative of a partial conception of citizenship geared mainly toward limited rights linked to
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the function of work. This chapter has thus showed that the image of the citizen was not at the forefront of integration efforts; conceptions of citizenship rather developed as the scope of principles and policies gained practical momentum. This would, however, soon change. At the beginning of the 1970s, the EU had been through almost a decade of institutional quagmire. Not only that, economic crisis loomed in the horizon. An enlarging European Community (EC) thus needed more than treaties and ideas of functional spillover from market integration into other policy domains. Identity, European Union, and an elected EP became hot prospects for how to handle the future of European integration.
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Chapter 2
Bringing Identity, Rights, and Elections In
Citizenship, rights, and identity would become explicit issues on the European agenda in the 1970s. After two decades of Treaty-making, policy-making, and judicial activism of the ECJ based on the principles of integration, the EC went into a period of reflection on its nature as a political entity. The politics of European citizenship became more than a legal issue of the treaties. Market integration and economic policies did not take a back seat, but political leaders and European institutions broadened the “palette” of integration by declaring what would be called “the European identity,” through reports on rights and political issues of European unification, and the granting of universal suffrage in the elections to the EP. Not only did the EP “enter” European citizenship discourse, but also the Council and the Commission addressed issues pivotal for the construction of citizenship. Identity and rights were the central issues of European citizenship politics in the 1970s. These issues go to the core of the idea of political community. It was, therefore, groundbreaking that European institutions took such issues on the agenda and engaged in serious debate over their meaning for the European project. While revolution might be too strong a word, there was clearly a potential for and aspirations to create a concept of citizenship and belonging that would mark the EC as a distinct political entity. Despite this promise, this chapter charts how the broadening of political and identity issues in European integration did not lead to a break with the market citizenship of the first treaties, but rather to a more comprehensive construction of what transnational citizenship could mean for European citizens and an enlarging EC. Importantly, these findings highlight the “in-between” character of European citizenship. In this period of “soul-searching” and rights debates, European institutions did not establish a stronger supranational foundation of citizenship and identity. While these issues were discussed under the aspirations of creating
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impetus for closer cooperation and even a European Union, there was a certain restraint in conceptualizing a European citizen “unbound” by his/her primary affiliation to that of the member state. The importance of this period for our understanding of the citizenship challenge in the multifaceted and complex process of integrating Europe should, therefore, not be underestimated. Indeed, the findings from this chapter supports a main argument of this book, as conceptions of citizenship— despite debates on novel concepts in the European setting—remained on the path created by the first treaties and basic principles of integration.
Paris, Copenhagen, Paris: Visions of Political Union and European Identity At the first summit of the newly enlarged EC1—in Paris—new and old member states concerted on a declaration of “intent” for the coming years of European integration. The final communiqué of the summit stated that the time had come to “realize the unity behind her interests.”2 This “unity was further conceived to be based on “democracy, freedom of opinion, free movement of men and ideas and participation by the people through their freely elected representatives.”3 And finally, in terms of stating future aims for the Community, the member states declared their intention to convert their institutionalized relations into a “European Union” by the end of the decade.4 As seen in the previous chapter, the image of the market citizen had dominated ideas, debates, and policy-making until the beginning of the 1970s. We must surely not make too much of declarations from summits (or what they avoided to declare). Yet, it is striking that these statements, which were constructed in a time when many wanted to inject new visions and “life” into the integration project, did not add much, if anything, to the conception of the boundary-transgressing market citizen of the founding treaties and free movement legislation. If this was, as, for instance, Kostakopoulou (2001) has argued, an important occasion in the assertion of the EC as an entity of its own, it was noticeably devoid of any explicit notion of the political community’s basic unit: the individual. In fact, the only direct assertion of the role of citizens was evident in the reiteration of free movement as a ground stone in the European construction and the rather tame assertion of participation given the lack of European voting rights. Thus, this purported initiation of new and market-transcending reflection on the Community’s nature
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as an entity did not foster any significant development in terms of citizenship politics. What the heads of states did, then, in the Paris Summit was to underline what one believed to be drawing the community on the “macrolevel” together: that is, core values such as democracy and freedom. The identity question was thus placed above individual citizens; it did not entail a notion of what drew the citizens as such together, but rather what was common for the member states: the self-proclaimed “driving wheels of European construction.”5 In other words, the prior assertions of the ECJ on the direct relation between citizens and the Community did not turn “political”: it was not taken in as part of the foundation for the Council’s proposal on a future political union in Europe. Explicit citizenship politics remained on the “sidelines”; the market citizenship of two decades or so of integration remained intact and supported by the Treaty framework, policy-making, and seminal verdicts in the ECJ. One should think, then, that a genuine declaration on European identity would explicate issues of citizenship in a way that the Paris Summit in 1972 refrained from. At the Copenhagen Summit the following year, the final declaration from the foreign ministers of the member states was on what was called “the European identity.”6 The notion of identity links up with the collective consciousness of a political community. It says something about “who we are” as a community. The modality of identity can for some communities seem self-evident, while it for others is a constant source of struggle and reformulation. The crucial issue here is that at the time of this declaration on identity, the idea and notion of collective identity in political communities was strongly linked to the framework of the nation-state. It is, therefore, perhaps unsurprising that in declaring what European identity was about, the emphasis was on defining the baseline for the external relations of the EC, of “the place which they occupy in world affairs.” This indicates an externalized conception of identity on the collective level rather than a clear perception of the link between the collective and its individual citizens. Still, the declaration was somewhat ambiguous on this score. It also highlighted that European identity was about defending and upholding “the principles of representative democracy, of the rule of law, of social justice . . . and of respect for human rights.” Indeed, these are all elements which connect to crucial issues of citizenship, albeit on a general level. At best, then, this indicates a minimally implicit notion of these values as important also for the individuals who were linked to the Community through primary citizenship in one of the member states. This connects
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further to the final remark of the Declaration that can be seen directly connected to citizenship. Notwithstanding the clear intention of pronouncing the commonality of the Community, this remark stated that there was a “diversity of cultures within the framework of a common European civilization.” In declaring what European identity was about, the focus was not only the assertion that the Community had common traits, but also that it consisted of different entities each with its specific history and culture. In a sense, then, the assertion was that Europe was brought together, not only through certain common norms or values, but also a kind of “unity in diversity.” Historically, citizenship has exactly been about constructing or perceiving unity among diverse individuals through settling norms of membership, bestowing rights and facilitating participation on the part of citizens. All these elements were lacking in the Copenhagen Declaration. Only identity remained, and, as shown, it lingered in the echelons of high politics, on the level of asserting how the Community could utilize its common norms and values in external relations. Based on this analysis, I disagree with Kostakopoulou’s (2001: 44–6) claim that the Declaration on the European Identity was primarily about creating the basis for Europeans (as in, say, Germans or Italians) given the aim of establishing a European political union. It was clearly more about creating the basis for Europe in relation to the “Other” writ large.7 Confronted with the realities of a weakened world economy due to monetary disorder and increasing calls for national protectionism (Gillingham 2003: 105), the Community asserted its identity in terms of foreign relations. The declaration was more about answering the question “what brings us together as a force on the international scene” than, say, “what brings individual citizens together as a European political community?” Focusing on more than identity, we can observe that the declaration was clearly lacking in terms of laying out indicators of who those “Europeans” were in terms of membership, potential rights attached to being “a European” and ideas of how they would participate in such a community. If there was a significant shift, then, in the European discourse on citizenship, it was a “step back” compared to the budding ideas and practices of a direct link between citizen and the Community that were evident in the late 1960s. Issues of belonging and identity were perceived mainly on the macrolevel when the Community asserted elements of its identity. The tendency was on the whole external—geared toward foreign relations—rather than inward-looking in terms of identifying the traits
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of a common European citizenship. In comparing such a declaration with evolving practices on the ground one should of course not overstretch interpretations. It is not given that the concreteness of practices necessarily translates into the “high” politics of summits. It is, however, worth noticing that the conceptions of identity and unity were limited in the sense that they—at least in explicit terms—dealt with questions of the community as such in its relation to other political and economic entities and not with the place of citizens within it. The Paris Summit of 19748 did not develop the issues raised on European identity and the Community’s foreign relations to any significant extent. It merely reiterated the need for progressing toward “European unity” by “gradually adopting common positions . . . in all areas of international affairs.” The Belgian Prime Minister Leo Tindemans was further assigned the task of sounding out opinions across the member states and Community institutions on the subject of EU. There was, however, an important contribution to more explicit citizenship politics than had been the case in the preceding summits. This contribution was initiative, in the sense that one asked for the assignment of two working parties to present reports on establishing a passport union as well as the possibility of giving “the citizens of the Member States special rights as members of the Community.”9 This last remark merits some further comments. Suddenly, national citizens were also perceived as individual members of the EC. The macrolevel assertions of the need for a European Union and on European identity were complemented by acknowledging that citizenship and individual rights were elements in the life of the EC. The criteria on which individual membership on the level beyond the nation-state would be based were, however, not spelled out explicitly. They were rather derivative and indirect, that is, based on citizenship in a member state. Yet, it is worth noting that this was the first time the notion of citizens as members of the Community was made explicit by its political leaders.
Passport Union The institution and symbol of the passport is strong in modern politics (see Salter 2003). When crossing state boundaries, the passport is the foremost proof of a person’s legal belonging to a political entity. In the absence of a passport, a state can legitimately restrict a citizen of another
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state in her boundary-crossing ventures. Just by addressing the issue of a passport union, the Community thus underlined that the belonging of individuals—the perennial question of membership—mattered for its self-understanding as a polity. In fact, the novelty of a concept like passport union was acknowledged at the outset of the Commission Report to the Council.10 It simply stated that “[t]he concept ‘Passport Union’ is a new one.” Still, the report did not claim to have created the concept ex nihilo. It was linked to past concepts and developments of significance in the integration process. Unification in terms of the foremost institutional signifier of membership in individuals’ external interactions was, perhaps unsurprisingly, linked with the principle of “free movement within the Union.”11 This political aim of a passport union clearly connects to the Royer verdict of the ECJ.12 Here, the Court declared that the right to enter the territory of another member state was conferred directly by the Treaty. Border-crossing was to be independent of prior authorization by the host state. Such a principle was in accordance with the aim of abolishing internal border controls of the Community through the unification of passports. In addition to the linkage with free movement, the report suggested that unification in terms of passports would play part in “the confirmation of it as an entity in relation to non-member countries in the form of a joint action vis-á-vis such countries (common foreign policy).” The idea here was to reach some harmonization of the rights of European citizens when encountering third countries. Clearly, this was most radical proposal of the report. Such a measure suggests a distinctive notion of individual membership as an effect of a principled rights status. All European citizens were construed as equals, not only in terms of the specific rights bestowed on them from the Community, but also through belonging to the Community as such. In doing so, the report also emphasized the external dimension of belonging or identity, albeit on the individual level rather than Community level, which was the case in the Copenhagen Declaration. The status of being “European” was seen to require equality when encountering third countries. This is indeed the very upshot of membership externalized, so to say. Historically, it has, for example, been seen as a powerful instrument to assert one’s citizenship in encounters with the law or external powers: the famous example is citizens of the Roman Empire which could raise the issue of their membership affiliation and get special treatment (Pocock 1995: 36). Yet, as much as this was a novel assertion of who belonged to the European polity, it did not amount to a more pronounced notion of what would
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bring these citizens together as members of a community as such. There was no notion of participation or identity involved in this “external” membership that could be seen as building blocks of a more complete conception of European citizenship. While some common rights in the external “relations” of European citizens was at the heart of the report, the transfer of authority to issue passports from the national to the European level was ruled out from the beginning. Issuing of such identity documents was to remain a national prerogative. However, it was underlined that a passport union would only have an import if some common appearance was reached, “so as to demonstrate, in addition to a connection to the country in question, a definite connection with the Community.” Not only practical aspects of this issue were addressed in the report. One also suggested the potential “psychological effect . . . which would emphasize the feeling of nationals of the nine Member States of belonging to the Community.” This aspect of belonging was also linked to suggesting harmonization of the rights of Community passport holders when confronted with the laws of nonmember countries. There seems, therefore, to have been a clear intent in raising the issue of a passport union to create a catalyst for identifying “the European.” By opening up the borders more profoundly than what could be achieved through legal interpretations of free movement, elements of a more pronounced idea of European citizenship emerged. The idea of belonging was, however, not cast in any radical new language of membership or identity. Identification on the part of citizens with “Europe” can then only be understood as secondary to the primary (or perhaps primordial?) national identity. It was by no means something that stood alone—it was always conceptualized with the “original” level of citizenship politics in mind. The question of abolition of border controls in the Community dealt exactly with the internal aspects of a purported passport union. The report suggested that if this was to be achieved it would have to require of “each Member State abolition of all forms of controls of individuals, whatever their nationality, carried out at the internal frontiers of the Community.” This was a rather sweeping suggestion that has not been put into effect, even after the Schengen Agreement. Third-country nationals are still subject to border controls upon travel internally in the EU (see e.g. Huysmans 2006: 68–9; Lavenex 2001: 858, 860–1). Finally, the discussion on a possible harmonization of legislation affecting aliens was very limited and linked explicitly to the preceding question on the abolition of internal border controls.
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Symbolically, the report on passport union underlined the potential supranational dimension of passport harmonization. A partial Europeanization of the appearance of passports as well as some common ground in the encounter of European citizens with third countries would partly have curbed the innately national character of identification papers and citizenship. While symbols can be relatively important in modern political life, and especially so in constructions of identity and belonging, it would, however, be the legal and market-oriented aspects of transnational rights that dominated also in the report on passport union. In terms of conceptualizing individuals and their place in European integration it did not really amount to much more than yet another measure of facilitation for a well-functioning European market. In this sense, this effort by the Commission clearly did not alter the conceptual path of European citizenship as it had developed until the mid-1970s. Not surprisingly, then, in the end, the measures proposed in terms of harmonizing passports did not add up to much more than the design of national ones: in 1981 it was finally decided that passports of member states were to share the same color and be inscribed with “the European Community.”
Special Rights for Europeans The more explicit question of individual rights was in fact on the agenda concerning individuals and their relation to the Community at the same time as that of a passport union. Ideas and queries regarding rights of European citizens were brought forward in the report on “The Granting of Special Rights.”13 At the outset, the report circumscribed the discussion on the “cosmopolitan” scope of rights by confirming that the intention of the initiating communiqué at the Paris Summit (1974) was that those entitled to special rights were “the nationals of the Member States of the Community.” Nationals of nonmember countries were explicitly excluded from attaining such rights. In discussing which rights were to be granted to these nationals, the report did, however, highlight the allusion to citizens of the EC in the communiqué from the Council.14 Europeans would be granted such rights, not because they were national citizens of a member state, but because their home country was member of a supranational political entity. In this sense, rights were to be granted because the whole was bigger than the sum of its parts.
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In spelling out the types of rights that could be bestowed on European citizens, the report did, however, not focus on genuine supranational rights. The focal point was how European citizenship could provide rights in second countries (of the EC), that is, rights that were previously exclusive for national citizens only. This was indicated in the assertion of what such special rights could not be: (1) rights that nationals of the host state did not possess; (2) human rights granted by states to all foreigners; and (3) rights that followed by virtue of the ECSC and Rome treaties. In laying out the positive rights that could follow from a “special” European status, then, the reference to citizens in the communiqué was clearly the guiding principle. In fact, it was claimed that focusing on citizens rather than nationals highlighted “the civil and political nature of the special rights.” Building on this, the report held up the rights to vote, to stand for election, and become a public official at all levels of government, including the national level. Indeed, it was further acknowledged that these were “political rights traditionally withheld from foreigners.” Taken to its extreme, such an assertion could be seen as a major conceptual shift in the contemporary understanding of citizenship; the core of the status would no longer be exclusively national. It would have changed the path of European citizenship discourse by a clearer separation of the enjoyment of rights within a given territory from membership through nationality of that given polity. To speculate here, the potentially radical upshot of this was perhaps perceived of as going too far; in the final instance, the report indeed emphasized that the distinctive status of the rights discussed in fact precluded complete equality with nationals of the host country with regard to political rights. The ideas regarding special rights as a consequence of belonging to a member state of the EC were important in that they involved explicit discussion regarding what a rights status for individuals entailed not only on the national, but also on the European level. The issue of membership was clearly at stake in this setting, albeit as a knock-on effect from the type and extension of the rights in question. There was congruence in the scope of rights and the basis upon which it was decided who could be the holders of such rights. Here, we clearly see that there was a dynamic interplay between the dimensions of rights and membership. There was an oscillation between the criteria for who were seen as members—based on nationality—and the extension of rights linked to the specific community to which European citizens were connected. This section has thus highlighted that when the Community finally engaged in more explicit discussion on rights, these were indeed premised on national membership
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in one of the member states. The discursive image of nationality was not “deposed.” And further, the special rights did not entail “material” rights in terms of specific entitlements from the Community level. Rather, it was a “right to have rights” (Lefort 1988) in the political community of a nation-state other than that of the original national citizenship. The conception of European citizenship that was brought forward in the discussion on special rights was thus one of a secondary character, of what I will call a type of residence-based semicitizenship. What does this mean more specifically? On the basis of residence in another member state, European citizens were treated as special in terms of their access to rights in the host country. Yet, it amounted merely to semicitizenship as the range of rights was circumscribed through the specifics of the treaties and linked exclusively to residence. When leaving the host country, these rights would no longer be attainable for the European citizens. This notion of an “alien’s” potential right to have rights in the host country’s political community did, however, not foster any explicit discussion on questions pertaining to identity and participation. Such an omission is somewhat surprising given the highly symbolic nature of opening up the political community by giving certain formerly exclusive rights to noncitizens. This clearly touches on the issue of identity as it involves the openness of citizen communities and the way in which citizenship is framed in terms of belonging; what are the outer boundaries of a credible political community and what draws it together? Linked to this is the omission of discussion on the participating aspect of citizenship rights. The discourse on citizenship in the Community remained on a formal level, so to say. It did not perceive how the granting of such rights would facilitate the actual participation of European citizens in second countries’ political life. The clarification on the nature of national-level rights stemming from the transformation of a set of previously excluded noncitizens into semicitizens or denizens was at the forefront of the endeavor rather than perceiving of European citizenship de novo. Notwithstanding these caveats regarding the supranational character of citizenship here, the scope of such a semicitizenship was somewhat broadened compared to the first years of integration. It went from the facilitation of free movement to the question of political rights in second countries. Finally, the specific rights that one envisaged is of importance here as the extension and type of rights as well as the degree of boundary between rights of citizens and noncitizens ultimately tells us something about the conception of citizenship that develops over time. That the emphasis was mainly on rights of a political character is indeed
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interesting as the scope of rights in earlier practices were very much limited to market integration and the facilitation of the free movement of workers. In this sense, the political had finally entered the discourse on European integration and its relation to the individual citizens.
A European Electorate Having opened a discussion on so-called special rights for European citizens to participate in the political community of member states, what followed was the implementation of a long-standing aim of the Treaty of Rome: that of a directly elected European Assembly or Parliament.15 The original parliamentary body of the first treaties was in fact given the right of initiative in drawing up the proposals for subsequent adoption of direct elections through a uniform procedure.16 This right of initiative was unique within the institutional nexus of the Community; the Commission enjoyed this right in all other areas of Community law (see Judge and Earnshaw 2003: 35). The EP pursued this right through a Draft Convention in 196017 as well as much of its work throughout the 1960s (Shaw 2007: 103). It was, however, not until the mid-1970s that the issue of a directly elected, representative EP gained momentum. After the Hague Summit in 196918 had reiterated the need to look into the case of universal suffrage for the Community, the EP stepped up the ante. The so-called Patijn Report19 (1974) provided a discussion on why direct elections of the EP would be an important step for the Community as well as the more technical rewriting of the original Draft Convention from 1960. The timing here is interesting in itself. At the same time as the EC was in “soul-searching” mode through addressing the idea of a European Union, asserting its European identity and raising the issue of rights, the question of a democratically elected, representative parliament was elevated onto the agenda. The various resolutions passed by the EP during the 1960s invariably highlighted the commitment of the EC to grant universal suffrage as laid down by the Treaty of Rome (Shaw 2007: 103). In the initial work of the EP on these issues, it argued strongly for the establishment of a uniform procedure20 for such elections. This would mean that European elections ought to be held according to common rules in all member states. The background reports and working groups of these resolutions mainly discussed administrative issues and problems that could arise if direct voting rights were introduced. They did, however, also consistently point out
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the importance of a direct link between the bearers of legitimacy—the peoples of the member states—and the European institutions. Already the first motion brought up in 1960 emphasized that universal suffrage would constitute an essential element of European unification.21 This was succinctly followed up by the Patijn Report. In the preamble of the subsequent resolution22 passed by the EP based on the recommendations of this report, it was forcefully underlined that “the process of European unification cannot succeed without the direct participation of the peoples affected” and it stated further that a directly elected EP “was indispensable . . . in achieving further progress towards integration and establishing a better equilibrium between the Community institutions on a democratic basis.” In essence, what the EP argued at this juncture was that there could be “no integration without representation” (Rittberger 2005: 197). These assertions were clearly mirrored in the explanatory statement of the Patijn Report where it was forcefully stated that “[d]irect elections to the European Parliament are essential to enable the peoples to play an immediate part in the unification of Europe.” This enabling of the peoples to participate directly in the dealings of the Community—and not the least the more general aim of unification of Europe evident throughout the discourse of the 1970s—was further linked to the question of legitimacy. Through political rights it was envisaged that the power of the Community would be supplemented by the necessary “legitimacy which has hitherto been lacking.” This legitimacy was directly attached to the requirement of creating “measures to extend the peoples’ participation in the construction of Europe.” Still, in laying out the potential scope of the rights, the national level was retained as the basic unit for European elections. This meant that European political rights were directly linked to national voting rights and did not have “cross-border” import analogous to, for instance, social rights based on the principle of free movement. Following the Patijn Report and the subsequent resolution and Draft Convention passed by the EP, the Council finally approved of direct voting rights for European citizens in 1976. The Council decision23 in itself did not significantly alter the content of the Patijn Report and the Draft Convention, including the issue of voting rights for European citizens in second countries of the EU. It was further devoid of any substantial comments and merely laid down the rules and procedures for the functioning of direct elections on the European level.24 The question of universal suffrage and political rights was in many ways treated as having an administrative import rather than a more profound
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significance for the evolution of the Community as a polity in its own right. Many of the documents and debates in this period dealt mainly with questions of time and procedure. Yet, there were some aspects of the discussions that points toward the pushing the issue of citizenship in the European project. This was mainly the case of the Patijn Report that subsequently had a vital impact on the granting of voting rights in the EU; it was clearly the catalyst that brought the discussion to its final level before implementation. The very granting of political rights was an empowerment of the individual European citizen by granting him/her—at least theoretically—a more direct role in the political system of the EC.25 Yet, in ascertaining its import for citizenship, we must consider not only the “face value” of these rights, but also their juxtaposition with other issues. In so doing, certain intersectional aspects of European citizenship become visible. The discussion on European voting rights and elections clearly linked up with the supranational character of integration. But what transpired from this unprecedented political inclusion of citizens in international institutions was not a supranationalization of citizenship as such. Rather, we see examples of the emergence and strengthening of the “in-between” character of European citizenship. While constructing citizenship rights “outside” the member states, this development was also “tempered” by the maintaining of important institutional prerogatives for the nationstates. To concretize, if we, for instance, see the very right in itself— that of voting in elections of the EP—juxtaposed with the issue of the scope of the rights, interesting corollaries arise. Neither the legislative act in itself, nor the Patijn Report based voting rights on a supranational notion of membership. Voting rights were clearly circumscribed through the electoral systems on the national level.26 No European right per se was perceived. This would have required establishing it on, say, free movement, residence, and the harmonization of electoral rules for EP elections, rather than primarily on national membership. Granted, the Patijn Report raised the issue cursorily in its conclusions. It is, however, surprising given the vigorous assertions regarding the significance of universal suffrage for democratic legitimacy that this was not highlighted as an issue of vital importance. Moreover, it is worth noticing that at virtually the same time free movement had been emphasized as the core of the access to “special” rights for European citizens. The restriction of voting rights through privileging the national level in terms of access to them thus points to a conception of citizenship which was political, yet evidently constrained in its extension. The importance
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of this for our understanding of European citizenship cannot be underestimated. These specific designations of rights (and membership) further connect to the understanding of participation in the European setting. By not linking European elections with the core principle of integration “on the ground”—that of free movement—an opportunity to foster the embryonic beginnings of a European demos went amiss. Political participation was linked to the national level while market participation was perceived in terms of free movement and transnational integration. What this further shows is that voting rights were conceptualized as granting legitimacy for the EP as one branch in the institutional nexus of the EU and not ultimately as being legitimated by a European demos as such. Its linkage to national electoral systems did not foster a notion of a “nation-transcending” European identity. There are indications that it rather affected European politics in the opposite direction. Research on European elections indisputably shows that from the first ones in 1979 they have been dominated by “national political issues, national parties and the political standing of national governments at the time” (Judge and Earnshaw 2003: 71).27 In this sense, the conception of what drew the community together was not one of commonness in terms of a shared electoral space, but rather the dispersal of European voters across multiple demoi28 with specific political systems and notions of membership. The long-standing efforts of a common European market were thus not paralleled by a common European political space. The establishment of voting rights in EP elections did not alter the conceptual path of European citizenship to any significant extent. The political dimension of being a European citizen became more visible for the citizens, but it did not, say, contribute to a radical reconfiguration of citizenship by adding a genuine European electoral space to those already existing in the member states. To conclude, what this analysis of the process leading up to the granting of voting rights in the EU has shown is that if this triggered a conception of European political citizenship, it was at best “veiled” given its ubiquitous linkage with the national level.
The Tindemans Report: Citizenship Already Out of Vogue? At the very end of 1975 the so-called Tindemans Report on European Union29 was presented. Why is this report interesting to investigate when
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it has been deemed an overall failure and insignificant for immediate policy- and law-making in the EC (see Dinan 2004: 163)? Having been initiated at the Paris Summit in 1974 and by following suit after discussions on explicit issues of citizenship such as passport union, special rights, and voting rights, the Tindemans Report is important for its temporal place in the discourse on the future of the European construction that evidently went on in the 1970s. It is further clear that the mandate of the Tindemans Report was perceived to involve not only institutional concerns of a purported EU , but also issues regarding the relation between individual citizens and the European institutions. It is, therefore, interesting that citizenship was seemingly out of vogue already in this report. It did not develop significantly the aims and ideas from the triad of summits from 1972–74 on European unity and identity. Given the explicit mandate stemming from the political declarations of these summits, this is not surprising. In terms of the more specific issues that the report addressed, these were mainly geared toward how policies, aims, and institutions were to be reconciled and properly integrated on the supranational level in light of the aim of EU. This was advocated mainly through a call for the “federalization” of the Community in order to bring about a common foreign policy and more effective institutions. For our understanding regarding issues of citizenship, the part on a so-called “Citizen’s Europe” is obviously the most important. In this section, the report starts out with the general assertion that “Europe must be close to its citizens.” This assertion linked to an analogy with what the report called “democratic countries.” It was asserted that, in the process of preserving the values that were the common heritage of such countries, the will of governments alone would not be sufficient. Such a project was also perceived to require the involvement of all those affected by it. This statist analogy did, however, not bring about any substantial discussion about how this could be perceived in terms of a genuine European citizenship. In discussing issues linked to citizenship, the report stated that a European Union ought to work toward “the protection of the rights of Europeans, where this can no longer be guaranteed solely by individual states.” It further advocated the “concrete manifestation of European solidarity by means of external signs discernible in everyday life.” With regard to rights, the report merely stipulated that this should be discussed further by the institutions, in addition to upholding consumer rights and environmental rights as essential. The latter
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ideas on rights were the only novel assertions with regard to dimensions of citizenship in the report. The discussion regarding these new rights was, however, not dealt with to any substantial extent. They remained on what I will call a declaratory level without any real import for European citizenship politics. In the statement that Europe should be brought close to its citizens, one could have expected a more pronounced notion of who could be perceived as these citizens. There was, however, no clear notion of membership or even identity in the report. To the extent that identity was brought up, it was explicitly linked with the notion of externalized European identity courtesy of the Copenhagen Declaration. Indeed, it is interesting that when a report on the broader issues of European unification was requested, substantial questions of citizenship fell out of vogue. Stating that a purported EU should be close to its citizens does not amount to much. Political rights and issues of participation were, for instance, not raised explicitly. Relating to the issue of solidarity, the report explicitly supported the process of unifying passports. As a corollary to this purported passport union, it additionally proposed a “gradual disappearance of frontier controls on persons moving between member countries.” Lastly, there were some more proposals regarding transport infrastructure, educational integration, and the harmonization of health schemes—but without any clear notion linking these to a conception of citizenship. Hence, in its proposals relating to the status of citizens, there was clearly a tendency to reiterate measures and discussions already under the way, rather than highlighting possibly new avenues for developing supranational citizenship related to European institutions.
Conclusion It was unprecedented when European institutions addressed explicit issues of citizenship in the 1970s. While “revolutionary” in terms of the topics expected from international institutions at this time, the EP, the Commission, or the Council did not rework the basic scope of rights as these were constructed in the first treaties. The content of rights was broadened somewhat to include political rights in the elections to the EP. Through this, the idea of participation was also widened so as to encompass not only work or production, but also voting for popular
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representatives on the European level. Despite the early arguments in the EP for instituting a uniform European procedure in these elections, they were ultimately tied to the electoral systems and traditions of the member states. The other big issue was that of identity. Contrary to the programming of identity in modern politics as an integral part of national political communities, identity was linked to “defining” the place of the EC in external affairs only. This chapter has, thus, demonstrated a central tension in European citizenship politics between nationally grounded institutions and concepts, supranational aspirations, and unprecedented applications of “traditional” ideas outside the framework of the nation-states. A basic starting point for this book is indeed the continuous vacillation between national and European ideas, and conceptions of citizenship in European integration. While this was not a pronounced conflict in the 1970s, its basic precepts were still clearly visible in the reports on passport union and special rights, as well as in the case of European voting rights. Transformative ideas about nation-transcending rights and identity issues were constantly “tempered” by the grounding of citizenship issues in a national-institutional perspective. This was most clearly visible in the most important development of this period, that of universal suffrage in European elections. The uniform supranational procedure of electing a popular assembly did not materialize. Thus, even in institutional terms, European elections were “second” to national elections. While addressing political issues, the potential for a European democratic culture dependent on genuinely border-transcending rights was precluded and limited by the explicit linkage between voting rights and national electoral systems. Moreover, free movement remained the “guiding light” of rights for European citizens. Supranational notions of citizenship did not infuse European rights politics with new purposes. For instance, so-called special rights were deemed “special” not by virtue of being specifically European, that is, linked to the supranational level of politics. Rather, they were constructed as a privileged semicitizenship whereby citizens of member states could be granted certain civil and political rights not available to citizens of third countries. The “promise” of citizenship debates in the 1970s ended as this chapter has shown in reasserting basic issues of integration. It should nevertheless not be underestimated as an important period in European citizenship discourse. The impetus of addressing citizenship explicitly
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would clearly have an impact in the next two decades. Identity, the proverbial “national” issue, was finally brought out in the open, although it initially linked up with formulating foreign policy aims rather than what kind of political community the EC was. Soon, however, visionary federalists in the first directly elected EP would take up the “foundational” mantle. In the next chapter, I chart how explicit constitution-making entered the European political scene and the effects this would have on European citizenship.
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Chapter 3
The European Parliament and the Spinelli Project
When a Popular Assembly, which later rebaptized itself as a European Parliament, was made part of the institutional nexus of the ECSC as the founding community of European integration, for sure, the intention was not that such an assembly would have other aspirations than to monitor the decision-making process of intergovernmental institutions (see Rittberger 2005: 73). After the EP was elected by universal suffrage for the first time in 1979, however, a group which originally consisted of relatively dedicated Eurofederalists and later involved MEPs across the political spectrum sought to influence the integration process by far stronger measures than at best “codeciding” legislative acts from the more powerful Council.1 This group, which rather strangely named itself “the Crocodile Club”2 and was led by the Italian MEP Altiero Spinelli, initially discussed solutions to the widely perceived “eurosclerosis” of the European integration process. Soon, however, it embarked on a venture not merely content with discussion on small-scale changes in the EU’s institutional setup. It aspired to provide a constitutional blueprint for the European Union declared as an aim at the Paris Summit of 1972. As such, this was the first explicit constitution-making effort within European integration.3 The EP invoked the need for constituting the European institutions anew through establishing its founding norms and values, basic principles and institutional procedures in a constitutional document that would be safeguarded from the myopic and self-interested concerns of political actors within the system. In short: the Spinelli Project set out to “save” European integration after years of political stalemate. The concept of constitution-making often invokes the idea of “revolution,” as in the making of, say, the American Constitution. While the EP through the Spinelli Project envisaged itself as a kind of constituent assembly of popularly legitimated European integration, a main
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argument of this chapter is that citizenship discourse still followed, more or less, “business as usual.” Constitution-making in the hands of the first (and historically unprecedented) directly elected parliamentary body in an international institution in the end fizzled out in yet another statement on the linkage between basic principles of the integration project and the room for citizenship rights. Transnational notions of citizenship prevailed. The main innovation on the part of the Spinelli Project would be that they were the first European institution to explicitly and openly announce the idea of so-called “Citizenship of the Union” as a meaningful concept.
“The Crocodile Club” The initiative to launch a debate within the EP on the future of European integration began in June 1980 when the Italian MEP Altiero Spinelli urged his fellow MEPs to join in an effort to revive political and economic integration.4 The work of “the Crocodile Club” commenced with a series of interventions and newsletters sent to all MEPs in order to take stock of the issues and problems that one could perceive to take on board within such a debate. In the first letter of Spinelli to his colleagues in the EP, emphasis was clearly put on issues regarding the institutional setup of the EC and difficulties of policy-making. The immediate background of Spinelli’s letter to his fellow MEPs that launched the constitution-making efforts of the EP was the political stalemate due to extensive use of veto in the Council of Ministers. Issues of citizenship were not dealt with at this early juncture of the process. Following up on the letter, however, “the Crocodile Club” presented a motion for a resolution in the EP.5 The practical suggestion of this resolution was to set up a committee of MEPs that would deal with the possibility of wide-ranged reform of the Community institutions. The resolution derived legitimacy for this from the fact that the EP had recently—and for the first time—been chosen through “direct elections by the people of the Community.” Thus, already in this early, initiative phase, individual citizens were seen as significant, albeit indirectly by being perceived to lend democratic legitimacy to such an endeavor. Citizens’ participation was, then, critical for instigating constitution-making also in the European setting. Hence, the MEPs who advocated the need for institutional reform and reigniting debate over the future of European integration saw this
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effort as a natural extension of their role as directly elected representatives of citizens in the political life of European institutions. They had surpassed the indirect nature of representation in previous European assemblies and taken on the mantle of representation as “acting for” a constitutive public (see Pitkin 1972). In the further efforts by “the Crocodile Club,” this point was reiterated several times.6 Moreover, in its newsletter, the role of citizens in European integration was perceived to be one mainly of participation: “[the Community] needs the people to participate in its activities.”7 Indeed, the emphasis on citizenly participation was not only linked to a discourse of legitimation, but also to the favoring of a political union that in the eyes of the committee would surpass the hitherto predominant economic mode of market integration in Europe.8 In addition to a focus on citizens as participants in the Community process, these early documents of the Spinelli Project started to declare a self-understanding as a constitution-making body.9 This self-understanding was further visible in that the group asserted that ultimately European integration would need to make a choice between what could be called a “Federal Europe” and an intergovernmental “Europe of the NationStates.”10 Clearly, such a “grand” choice speaks to the constitutionmaking impetus of the process that had been set in motion within the EP. That constitution-making involves a question on the basic institutional and power-sharing structure that constitutes a polity is widely held within the literature (see e.g. Ackerman 1991: 6–7; Goodin 1996: 226–9). Following this, and the passing of the resolution in the EP11 on setting up a Committee on Institutional Affairs, the Crocodile Club repeated the perception regarding the constitutional character of the project by seeing the EP as a constituent assembly drawing up what they called a “Constitution-Treaty” to finally achieve a European Union.12 The idea and actual participation of citizens in the first “supranational” elections provided it with the necessary prior “input” legitimacy comparable to historical cases of constitution-making where a constituent assembly elected by the citizens forged a constitutional framework for the polity, such as in the United States (1783), Norway (1814), Switzerland (1847), and the Federal Republic of Germany (1949).13 In this enacting sense, the role of citizens in constitution-making is tied up to what Arendt (1965) referred to as the “constitutio libertatis.” Focusing on individuals as participants addressed their status in public terms, rather than primarily in private terms—as worker or consumer—as had been a persistent mode of conceptualizing citizenship in the first three decades of
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European integration. Yet, the highlighting of citizens’ participation was as far as “the Crocodile Club” went in establishing a notion of citizens and their place within the nexus of European institutions, laws, and policies. Membership, rights, and identity were not addressed as significant issues in the work of “the Crocodile Club.” Moreover, participation was appealed to for purposes of legitimacy much more than to provide the nucleus of a pronounced conception of citizenship within a constitutionalized European polity. All this said, in this initiative period there was not much discussion on broader issues of treaty transformation and constitution-making. The impetus was to lay the ground for the subsequent work of a committee that would deal with the preparations of a Draft Treaty to be debated by the EP.
The Committee on Institutional Affairs On the basis of the initiative taken by the Spinelli Project and the resolution setting up the Committee on Institutional Affairs, one embarked on the preparatory work for the overhaul of the Treaty framework of the European institutions. This work would be of long gestation. A whole score of issues dominated its deliberations, several of which connected directly or indirectly to the question of citizenship. Already at the outset of the committee’s work, the concept of constitution was highlighted as relevant for its mandate.14 This did, however, not instill an approach to completely changing the course of European integration. The early discussions and working documents of the committee rather emphasized that issues of decision-making and institutional setup was at the heart of its subject matter. In a working document by Altiero Spinelli that laid out the contemporary background for the work of the committee, these issues were further linked to an approach that did not advocate the abolishment of nation-states, but rather a multitiered system marked by “unity in diversity” based on respect for democratic freedoms and individual rights.15 This was visible, for instance, in a plea for clarification of the political objectives of the EC as well as settlement with regard to the issue of which level of government ought to be in charge of which policy competences. The narrow remark on individuals in terms of their rights and democratic freedoms as the basis for a Union built on “unity in diversity” was not followed up by the first more comprehensive draft report16 of the committee. It merely reiterated the legitimacy basis provided by direct
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elections and underlined that the tasks of the Union should be linked to a perceived increase in the political and economic solidarity between the peoples both internally and externally vis-à-vis “the rest of the world.” This report laid the groundwork for a resolution to be presented to the plenary of the EP at a later stage in the process. Thus, it seems clear that more concrete issues regarding citizenship were not seen as relevant at this stage of the process for reforming the institutions and laying the ground for a European Union. At the next juncture of the work on this motion for resolution,17 such issues were still not at the forefront. In this later draft, there was, however, a stronger emphasis on issues of social justice and rights. The tasks of the Union were to be formulated with solidarity between the peoples, respect for human rights and democratic liberties, progress of social justice and full employment as its backdrop. In the debate on these draft reports and resolutions, the Committee focused mainly on institutional issues and aspects of the preamble and less on formulations of more substantive import in terms of policy and political principles that would underpin a constitutional document for a European Union.18 This first phase of the preparatory work culminated with the submission of a report to the EP containing a motion for a resolution on the committee’s work.19 In laying out the explanatory statement of the report,20 citizenship emerged somewhat more clearly than in the previously mentioned working documents. This was not so, however, through a direct use of the concept of citizenship. Again, the status of individuals was treated in indirect terms through the “legitimacy argument” concerning direct European elections. On the basis of this legitimating principle, the committee elucidated the basic tenets of Treaty reform. It claimed that a Union had always been the ultimate aim of European integration. In addition to this it asserted that the current structure was undemocratic due to the sidestepping of the elected and directly representative body in legislative matters. And lastly, it concluded that what it called a “European approach” to policy-making was needed. Notwithstanding the lack of a pronounced understanding of the location of individuals within such a system and their relational status to its political institutions, this does point to a notion of such a community as built on the commonality of “Europeanness.” A polity with clearly independent features could be foreseen that clearly surpassed the intergovernmental model of a community of nation-states. In the motion for resolution that was presented to the plenary of the EP at this juncture, it was emphasized that the treaties ought to be
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modified in accordance with the EC’s fundamental values that, however, remained unspecified in terms of more substantive content. The emphasis on grounding the tasks of the Union on solidarity between the peoples, social justice, and human rights was retained from earlier versions. Further, the motion added a clause on respect for ethnic and cultural diversity, and underlined human rights, not only in individual, but also in collective terms. In addition, it was underlined that the tasks of the Union should also contribute to peace and security while respecting the rights of the peoples. In terms of the institutional setup of the would-be Union, the already existing system of a bureaucratically led executive, a Council of nationstate representation, and a directly elected EP was retained. But, through the emphasis that the institutional system of the Union was to ensure democratic legitimacy, the motion proposed to shift the legislative balance in favor of the EP, which in its self-understanding derived its mandate from “the Citizens of the Union.”21 So, put shortly, individuals were significant in terms of rights and legitimacy. But, in addition, by focusing on rights of collectives and respect for the inherent diversity of a community of sovereign states, the “Europe of nation-states” model retained an important position within the debate—in clear contrast to the specifically “European” approach to policy-making in the explanatory statement of the report. Thus, already at this early stage of the preparatory work—before the work of drafting actual treaty provisions—issues of the relationship between levels and the degree of “distinctness” for the European level were already at the core of the process. In the final resolution of the EP22 this tension within the Spinelli project was not resolved. This resolution remained more or less as proposed by the Committee, and thus lent support to the further work of drafting a comprehensive Treaty text reforming the EC and constitutionalizing a Union. The next phase of negotiations took on the issue of coming up with a Draft Treaty that could be debated in the plenary of the EP. In this period, the committee thus debated the very substance of a constitutional treaty, down to each and every article. In these debates, issues of the institutional setup of a Union, the division of competences between levels of government and more substantive issues under the heading “Policy for society” were clearly at the forefront. There is not much evidence of a prominent place in the committee for deliberations on citizenship. There were scattered debates about rights,23 as well as discussion on the link between citizens and the perceived democratization of European integration through a new treaty.24
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Out of the blue, however, the committee came up with the first explicit proposal by a European institution to include the phrase “citizen of the Union” in a European Treaty.25 In connection to this proposal, there was also extensive discussion on whether to address individual rights as fundamental or human rights. Thus, at this juncture, issues regarding citizens and “the status of their status,” so to say, became more prominent. The inclusion of the phrase “citizen of the union” into the preliminary Treaty brought forward a more direct conception of citizenship within the project. Initially, the legal status of such a citizenship was not entirely clear. For instance, the concept was merely proposed to be part of an article that stipulated that individuals would have certain (fundamental or human) rights. Curiously then, the pivotal issue regarding the status of such a citizenship vis-à-vis national citizenship institutions was not brought into the debate at this time. The reasons for this are not possible to discern from the sources. One speculation could be that the concept of citizenship was merely introduced to give the Treaty more of a “constitutional aura” than had hitherto been visible in the committee’s deliberations. The unsettled nature of membership would, however, soon change. In the next motion for resolution on the Draft Treaty26 it was stated that “[t]he citizens of the Member States are also citizens of the Union.” Thus, citizenship on the European level was considered as an auxiliary status to be attached to the already existing national citizenship institutions of the member states. When it finally emerged, then, the answer to who were to be seen as members and on what basis was found by looking to the member states. Thus, the nationality principle which was so pivotal to the citizenship discourse of policy-making and ensuing practices was taken up also by the Spinelli Project. This membership aspect of citizenship was, however, not the only description of what citizenship would mean under Article 5 of the proposed Draft Treaty. The article also stated that these citizens were to “take part in the political life of the Union . . ., enjoy the rights granted by the Union and be subject to its laws as to their own laws.” Thus, though clearly a complementary concept built on prior national citizenship, it was also vested with certain features speaking to a free-standing quality of citizenship on the European level. This quality was found in the vigorous emphasis on political participation by European citizens; they were primarily political actors in the Union. Participation was, however, not only linked to “voluntary” participation on the part of the citizens themselves. More prominently, it was brought into play by a link between citizens’ participation in the first direct elections of the EP to what can
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be called the “legitimacy argument” of the constitution-making project. Nevertheless, this is interesting as the conceptions of citizenship that had emerged and been consolidated in previous years, clearly crystallized around a more privately oriented notion of the citizen as a market actor than an actor in the public affairs of the community.27 In addition to the acknowledgment of the political character of European citizenship, the draft motion for resolution furthermore invoked the concept of citizenship by stating that further developments of European integration “will be based on the consent of its citizens and the Member States.” In this sense, then, citizenship was perceived to be a matter not only for individuals as “addressees” of rights, but also as ultimate “authors” of the Treaty basis on which such rights become a reality. Through such assertions, a rather independent conception of citizenship appeared where it was not only derivative of prior membership on the nation-state level. But, this was as far as rights were deemed of importance for the concept of citizenship as such. As participation was perceived to be so pivotal for a European citizenship, one could have expected a somewhat more direct connection between, for instance, political rights and the concept of citizenship. As was shown earlier, this was not the case. Civil, economic, and social rights were, in fact, highlighted as part of the underlying principles of the Union besides pluralist democracy, the rule of law, and freedom. These rights were, however, not linked directly to a citizenship status, but rather to the more broadly defined principles of the Union. Further, still in the “preamble” of the proposed resolution, it was stated that the Union was to “protect the dignity of the individual and respect and grant to any person coming within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms contained in this Treaty.” As such, the Spinelli Project debated rights more as linked to the underlying principles of the Union, and much less as attached to a clear conception of citizenship, of what such rights would mean for the relation between citizen and polity. In fact, to the extent that rights “surpassed” the declaratory level of principles, they were conceptualized in universal terms rather than linked to an exclusive European citizenship status. In the explanatory statement28 and preparatory documents29 of the final proposed resolution at this juncture in the process, the committee emphasized more than previously the place of individual citizens within the European integration project. Democratic human rights and social justice was reiterated as the fundamental basis of the Union, and European citizenship was acknowledged as one of the new competences
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to be taken on by a Union.30 In the report on “the law of the Union,” it was underlined that the protection of fundamental rights in addition to democracy would provide the necessary legitimacy for the Union.31 In the stipulation of which rights were to be considered within the Union’s remit, the report went further than at earlier junctures and laid out on the one hand civil and political rights, and on the other hand economic, social, and cultural rights. Again, these types of rights were conceptualized in universal terms and not attached explicitly to the existence of a European citizenship status. Not only rights in this “traditional” language were invoked by this part of the preparatory documents. Free movement (laid out as a key civil right) and nondiscrimination on the basis of nationality were also upheld as vital for citizens connected to a European polity.32 These rights, although pivotal to the citizenship discourse of policy-making had hitherto remained largely “silent” within the Spinelli Project. Free movement was further linked to a more substantive notion of social policy as important for European citizens. In doing so, this part of the report also advocated that a right of residence for Union citizens should be a corollary to full Union citizenship and not wholly dependent on work or employment.33 In the debates of the EP34 on the resolution and the content of these reports, the work of the Committee received broad support, amidst some voices of discontent mainly among already Euroskeptic MEPs from Denmark and the United Kingdom. Among the supporters, issues of the overall importance, institutional setup as well as rights figured prominently in the debate. The strong support was further visible in the resolution that was finally passed by the EP.35 The resolution remained largely as proposed by the committee, which included an identical provision on citizenship. Yet, on other counts, citizenship was more pronounced than in the proposed resolution, for instance, by highlighting free movement and nondiscrimination as additional rights of European citizens.36 In the final deliberations on a comprehensive draft for submission to the EP, the Committee did not introduce many new aspects compared to the resolution that was passed in September 1983. The paragraph on citizenship, for instance, remained unchanged. In a revised draft,37 mainly changes in terms of introducing more “lofty” assertions in the preamble were visible, in addition to some changes of the sequencing of the text. Lastly, issues and questions concerning identity were completely absent from the preparatory work on a new European Treaty. There was no notion of the citizen community that would be linked to the Union
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created by such a Treaty. Part of the ethos of constitution-making thus lacked in the important preparatory period before the Draft Treaty was presented for debate in the EP plenary session. Identity would, however, figure in the final deliberations over a European Union constitution, albeit not in the “traditional” notion of the strong evaluations of what keeps a political community together internally.
The Draft Treaty on European Union: The EP as a “Constituent Assembly” On February 14, 1984, the Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union38 was finally passed by the plenary of the EP. In the preceding section, I argued that issues of identity did not figure at all in the preparatory phase of the Spinelli Project. Individuals and citizenship were not conceptualized against the backdrop of a specific notion of what brought them together in the first place. Curiously, then, the concept of identity was brought forward in the very beginning of the preamble of the finalized Treaty. It argued that it was time for Europe to “assert its identity.” The identity concept was thus more on the level of high politics and the relations to other political entities than on the level of asserting the particularity of the community that the Treaty would constitute. Interestingly, this followed precisely in the footsteps of the Declaration on European Identity that was passed a decade earlier in the Copenhagen Summit. To the extent that identity as linked to the idea of citizens belonging to a community was addressed by the Draft Treaty, it was, then, mainly within concrete provisions. There was no conceptual import to declaring the need for Europe to assert its own identity in an internal sense as this was devoid of any further clues as to what this identity would consist of. Further, the assertion of respect for the historical identities, dignity and freedom of the peoples of Europe, was clearly steeped in the view of European citizenship creating a kind of minuscule “unity in diversity”; it was ultimately based on prior citizenship in a member state. There was, however, one more indirect statement on identity in the Draft Treaty. In Article 46, it was asserted that further efforts at harmonization and integration of laws and policies were to be sought in order to “reinforce the feeling of individual citizens that they are citizens of the Union.” The interface between the belonging felt by each citizen and the kind of community that citizenship was related to, then, was concrete policy-making. Thus, in the sense that identity issues were addressed
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more explicitly, they were linked to law-making and “the production” of common Union policies. This, then, points to a conception of citizenship as rights- and law-based rather than based on some notion of an underlying sense of “prepolitical” European identity or belonging. Apart from this, the final Treaty did not depart radically from the draft versions that had been discussed and passed by the EP toward the end of the preparatory phase. For instance, pluralist democracy and respect for human rights were retained as basic principles for the Union’s existence and political actions. In Article 3 of the Draft Treaty, citizenship of the Union was established: “The citizens of the Member States shall ipso facto be citizens of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be dependent upon citizenship of a Member State: may not be independently acquired or forfeited.” The image of the individual citizen was, then, rather important in the eyes of the EP. How so? For the first time within European integration, one of the major institutions envisaged an integration process that included a citizenship status linked directly to the European level of governance. It is also clear that in the final draft, the citizen was more at the forefront than what was shown to be the case in the initiative and preparatory phases of the Spinelli Project. Thus, in the final Treaty, the additionality of citizenship on the European level was more pronounced than what had been the case in the preparatory work on the Treaty. The article left no doubt as to the status of individual membership in relation to the European polity. It was to be unequivocally linked to nation-state citizenship. In fact, the Draft Treaty did not even envisage a notion of a “free-standing” citizenship in terms of the formal membership status. It was seen as what was called ipso facto evident that citizens of the member states would also be Union citizens. This status was, then, not “established” in the same manner as, say, in the Maastricht Treaty, but rather seemed to follow “naturally” from the fact the purported Union would be comprised of already existing states or political communities with settled citizenship institutions. To the degree that citizenship was grounded it was through citizens’ participation in the “political life of the Union.” Thus, it also invoked an image of an independent political basis for European citizenship to be played out on the European level as such and not only on the nationstate level. This was further linked to Article 14 where it was asserted that the primary site for such political participation would be the election of the EP by direct universal suffrage. The drafters laid a heavy emphasis, then, on the role of political citizenship in a European Union. This
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was connected to more than a potential of participation as a corollary to certain rights. The wording “shall take part in the political life of the Union” in a sense stipulated something of a duty to participate. This is interesting as duties of citizenship were not articulated to any extent in the first three decades of European integration. Notwithstanding the focus on political rights, there was no conception of an independent rights catalog except for those conferred directly by the Treaty to those holding the status of Union citizenship. In Article 4, the Union rather pledged to maintain and develop rights attained from other sources such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the constitutions of the member states, in an early attempt, perhaps, at “constitutional synthesis” (see Fossum and Menéndez 2011). A European “bill of rights” had been under consideration, but the Treaty postponed the decision on this for the political institutions of the Union. The notion of rights was linked more to universal human rights than territorially, politically, and legally circumscribed citizenship rights. For instance, the Treaty promised—on the part of the Union—the protection of “the dignity of individuals” and to grant every person within its jurisdiction fundamental rights and freedoms as derived from the combined sources of national constitutional traditions and the ECHR. The so-called “objectives” of the Union give some further clues. For instance, in Article 9 the Treaty laid down that full employment and a free market were to be key objectives of the Union. Such objectives were further to be attained against the backdrop of a principle of nondiscrimination on the basis of nationality. Free movement of persons was also put forward as a key objective, albeit not through a link to European citizenship, but rather to the promotion of security and peace in international relations. In the outline of the more concrete policies of the Union, however, free movement was in Article 47 linked unequivocally to a market notion of European community. As a corollary to this market orientation, in Articles 56 to 62 the Treaty further focused on particular policy fields that the Union should engage in. Among these, issues of social security and welfare figured most prominently in addition to questions of consumers, regional policy, and environmental policy. Taking into account the key position granted to political participation both regarding the legitimation of the constitution-making project and in terms of citizenship within the ostensible Union at the center of the project, the core of its conception of citizenship emerges within this framework. Both the rights of and duties to participation served to delimit the community of European citizens from the potential universe
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of citizens that were rendered significant for the Union’s protection of human rights. Hence, through the notions of political rights and participation, a modest and informal basis for membership and belonging emerged. In addition, then, to nationality which established a rights status that ultimately could be enjoyed to a considerable degree also by noncitizens, a political conception of citizenship came into view, which served as a marker between insiders and outsiders. The focus on participation did, however, not create an exclusively political conception of citizenship. The basic principles of nondiscrimination based on nationality and free movement were retained in the Draft Treaty. It is interesting that these principles were inserted in the section on “the objectives” of the Union. As these objectives were linked mainly to economic development through an internal market, notwithstanding the political impetus of citizenship, two enduring principles of European integration in terms of the status of individuals connected directly to the hitherto prevailing vision of market integration in Europe. The final phase of the Spinelli Project and the Draft Treaty laid down a conception of citizenship built on four main aspects. First, it was unequivocally based on nationality, and as such, on a par with a prevailing aspect of the European citizenship discourse ever since its nascent construction under the founding treaties. Secondly, this “federalist” understanding of citizenship further prioritized rights and political participation as the core, both of the active “citizen role” and the institutional interface between the single citizen and the political institutions on the European level. In fact, in the outline of the properties regarding the participatory dimension of citizenship, this was not only perceived as a right, but also as a specific duty to take part in the political life of the Union. Thirdly, this was, however, not linked to a notion of a thick prepolitical identity bringing European citizens together. Identity issues were rather raised as a corollary to measures of harmonization and law-making. Fourthly, and not surprisingly then, the Draft Treaty did perceive of the market citizen enjoying rights of free movement and nondiscrimination as core features of the continued integrative effort to be attained through not only European integration, but also a Union.
Conclusion The Spinelli Project started out with a self-understanding as a constitution-making assembly with the aim of achieving profound change in the
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Treaty framework of European integration. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the group of MEPs linked the participation of citizens in European elections with the legitimacy of making a new constitution for a European Union. In fact, this chapter has highlighted that participation remained at the core of the debate on citizenship throughout the entire process. A main argument of this book is the endurance and path dependence of certain key principles in the European discourse on citizenship, rights, and identity. Indeed, also in this self-professed constitution-making attempt, the political conception of citizenship was grounded in nationality in terms of membership, a notion that was settled relatively early in the process and remained uncontested. Indeed, the issue of nationality seemed to have moderated the federalist views of several MEPs. Some Euroskeptics in the EP were negative of bringing the very concept of constitution in play in the European setting, as this was understood as a proverbial national issue. And so, even though Eurofederalists and other supporters of European integration pushed the constitutional project forward, in the end, it did not amount to a far-reaching break with the path of citizenship discourse that had been consolidated in the 1970s. The political import of citizenship was also visible in the fact that political rights were the only ones linked exclusively to European citizenship constituted through the abovementioned notion of membership. Other rights were steeped in a notion of universal (human) rights, both in terms of their specific scope and in assertions of the purported Union’s responsibility on a more declaratory level. As citizenship became increasingly important as the process moved on, I argue that rights could have been expected to figure more prominently in the Spinelli Project. It is furthermore interesting that there was a lack of a pronounced rights catalog linked to the European level as such, given that this had been prominent especially in the special rights discourse in the 1970s. As such, this draws attention to a difference between policy-making relevant for citizenship and the more concrete and focused orientation of a constitution-making project like the one initiated by the EP. Within the former, conceptions of citizenship emerged mainly as a corollary to the facilitation of an internal market relevant for individuals through rights of free movement, residence, and work, while in the latter, the political character of the endeavor was highlighted at the outset, as the aim was to create a new impetus and democratic legitimacy for the integration process, in constitutional as well as institutional terms. As the Spinelli Project proceeded, the focus on the political shifted from a perception of participation as a precursor to legitimacy, via a
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notion of participation as such mediated by specific political rights, to a notion of an individual duty to participate in the political life of the polity. Interestingly, this broadened emphasis on participation, which ended in the inclusion of duties into the discourse on citizenship, was not emulated by any vigorous assertions of identity related to the citizen partaking in the life of the polity of which he/she is a member. Through its focus on political participation in this way, both in terms of legitimacy and active citizenship in everyday politics, the Spinelli Project clearly conceived of citizenship as a dynamic and evolving phenomenon embedded in the development of the would-be Union’s policies and institutions. In this sense, the constitution-making effort of the EP emulated a core feature of citizenship discourse until then, that is, the indisputable development of citizenship juxtaposed with evolving political and legal practices of European institutions. Lastly, therefore, this highlights that the Spinelli Project, within the frame of understanding itself as a constitution-making endeavor, refrained from constructing both the institutions and individual status of its “end-product” as grounded in a static notion of the composite (political) community of citizens. The significance of the consolidating approach of the Spinelli Project should not be underestimated. The EP did not have strong policymaking powers in its first period as a directly elected parliamentary body, yet invoking the idea of a (European) constitution brings with it certain expectations. Why write a constitution that basically reiterates already existing “constitutional” principles of the polity? The Spinelli Project was partly based on the idea that something was “broken” in European integration and needed to be “fixed.” In the end, however, it seems like the constitution-makers from the EP rather subscribed to the proverb “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” If the aims of the Spinelli Project had initially been radical, they seemingly also had to encounter and consider the received conceptions of citizenship steeped in the “ethos” of first treaties and their basic principles of integration. This is perhaps part of the reason why the initiative in the end lacked the necessary support from the member states and floundered, but still became the template for the SEA: the first major revision of the treaties and the basis for citizenship in the EU.
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Chapter 4
Europe of “No Borders”
It is widely held that European integration was reinvigorated in the 1980s (see Dinan 2004; Gillingham 2003; Moravcsik 1998). After the previous decade where the prospects of a Union had been addressed, rights of individuals had been implemented and—in the eyes of political leaders—the European identity had been determined, European integration entered a phase of deeper market integration and efforts to finally create a borderless Europe in the Schengen process. And, not the least, the constitution-making effort in the EP’s Spinelli Project had provided impetus for debates on symbols, signifiers, and Treaty frameworks of European institutions and their relation to citizens. At face value, then, the years from the mid-1980s to the “big bang” of the Maastricht Treaty (1992) can seem like a “dry” period in European integration. There were no major controversies or conflict, the ship of “Europe” was finally steaming onwards in the direction of “an ever closer union.” This relatively peaceful state of affairs notwithstanding, the 1980s were important in European citizenship discourse. The main message of this chapter is that after the first, somewhat uneasy and ambiguous steps of explicit citizenship discourse in the previous decade, politics of citizenship centered on the main ideas of European integration “in action”; those of market integration and a Europe of “no borders.” Clarifying and constructing European citizenship was, however, not at the apex of integrationist politics in the SEA or the Schengen Agreement. Rather, and in line with important path dependent traits of EU integration, the concept of citizenship would be affected by the further development of free movement principles and the attempt to finally reach a single market in Europe. This book started out with the puzzle of where to situate European citizenship in the macroinstitutional architecture of Europeanized and globalized political organization. Is it more national or European? Or perhaps more intriguingly: characterized by a specific and contextualized
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“in-between” character? Not only the intermediary character of citizenship politics in the short time between the constitution-making project of the EP and the Maastricht Treaty attest to the in-between character of citizenship that has developed over the course of European integration. The truly transnational features of European were cemented at this time and would soon become central to institutionalized citizenship even in the Maastricht Treaty.
“A People’s Europe” At the Fontainebleu European Council in 1984, it was decided to set up an ad hoc committee to prepare measures to “strengthen and promote the identity and image of [the Community] for both its citizens and for the rest of the world.”1 This effort led to the two so-called Adonnino reports:2 the first of which dealt mainly with issues regarding border controls within the Community, and the second that brought topics such as rights and participation to the fore. In setting out issues relevant for European citizenship, the Adonnino Committee took as its starting point key questions that had already been addressed in the citizenship discourse of the previous decade. In fact, it started out with a call for the implementation of a common European passport as this had not been completed in all member states. In laying out the general aim of the committee, the first report stated that it was “of great importance in making the Community more credible in the eyes of its citizens.” This general aim was connected explicitly to developing policies in the field of “freedom of movement for Community citizens” and “the full and integral implementation of a ‘Europe without frontiers.’” Finally, this was highlighted as a “necessary corollary of . . . the completion of the internal market.” The Adonnino Committee did not sidestep real issues of importance for individuals and a notion of European citizenship. Yet, despite its relatively high profile and the breadth of its mandate, it resorted to dealing with issues already on the table in the integration process and rather unimaginative image building symbols. Indeed, the first report started out with linking the principle of free movement with the program for the completion of the internal market. The perennial question of individual membership was, however, not addressed explicitly. One can only speculate on the possible reasons for such an omission. Taking into account the findings hitherto, it is perhaps indicative of
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the “nationality principle” as having been institutionalized—even internalized—in the citizenship architecture of the Community. This is not only visible by the very omission of the membership issue in terms of inclusion, but also due to the fact that the case of third-country nationals and their rights on the European level were addressed in the report. Furthermore, membership also concerns the question of residence. The Adonnino Committee brought the notion of residence rights on the European level further by generalization. This idea was strongly supported by the Commission who also urged the Council to refocus this issue.3 It advocated a general right of residence in second countries for citizens of the member states. Standing by itself, this would no doubt mean the “liberation” of European citizenship from its dependence on labor activity. But, on closer reading, the measure proposed would be made “subject to requirements of public order and security” as these were laid out in Article 56 of the Treaty of Rome. Even though work was less definite as a criterion for being a member, individual membership was not conceived as unconditional in the European setting. The general import of such a right of residence was thus put into doubt by the report itself. By circumscribing a citizenship based on a right of residence in this way, the report in fact highlighted the derivative character of European citizenship. There is consensus within theoretical work in the field that citizenship is unconditional for members in terms of their right to territorial residence (see e.g. Brubaker 1992: 24). Once you are a citizen, the state to which you belong as a member cannot legitimately restrict your residence on its territory. By making European-level rights conditional through such measures, the development of European citizenship vis-à-vis national citizenship was somewhat clarified. In terms of settling membership, national citizenship was always given priority. Until 1985, European citizens were gradually bestowed a special rights status favoring them vis-à-vis third-country nationals in other member states. The conceptions of citizenship coming out of these piecemeal developments and declarations of intent cannot, however, be adequately interpreted against the frame of national citizenship. Rather, the emphasis on the rights status as special and exceptional in its consequences for citizens is yet another indication that elements of European citizenship developed in specific ways as “knock-on” effects of concrete practices of policy-making, legal interpretations, and discursive interventions aimed at the general question of the relationship between individual citizens and European institutions.
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Starting out from the discussion on the territorial rights of European citizens, the second report of the Adonnino Committee claimed to put forward overall political appraisals of issues often dealt with on a more technical and administrative level. At face value, then, this report can be read as putting the politics of European citizenship firmly on the agenda. But, what did this translate into in terms of concrete citizenship politics? In dealing with the special rights of citizens, the report harked back to the Declaration on the European Identity from 1973 and its emphasis on principles of democracy, the rule of law, social justice, and human rights as the core of the European project. In doing so, the Adonnino Committee noticeably overlooked the fact that the elite construction of European identity did not raise the issue of individuals as part of a European community of citizens, but rather what was a decade earlier deemed as its foreign policy identity. The easy interpretation of this would be that the EC in this period was not much more than an advanced security community in search of a common ground, not only institutionally, but also in more profound identity terms. But, I argue, it also tells us something important about the circumstances of citizenship in a “nonstate” entity. Dealing with individual rights and political belonging are not innocent pastimes. Conceptually, they go to the core of the perennial issue of the individual/collective nexus of modern political organization. In terms of conceiving identity also as a citizens’ issue, the Adonnino Committee took a macroscopic stance. They translated signifiers of identifying the EC as a player in regional and global politics into the basis for individual citizens’ legal and cultural belonging to the supranational entity. Such translations of political declarations into identity proposals were not unique in the integration debates at the beginning of the 1980s. In the next chapter, I show how basic ideas and principles of a European Union would be used both for political and academic purposes to embellish postnational visions of Europe’s future. While this may have made sense from certain political and intellectual backgrounds, the danger of such processes lies in the reification of novel concepts and ideas before their actual effects and outcomes are determined. There were, however, also more concrete attempts at charting the place of citizens in the European political architecture. Adonnino’s second report focused on political citizenship; both on the European and nation-state levels. On the European level, this amounted to vigorously encouraging the adoption of a uniform procedure for elections to the EP, a right to petition Community institutions, and the institutionalization
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of a European Ombudsman. On the nation-state level, it most importantly urged the granting of “special” voting rights in host member states in local elections as well as ensuring that European citizens would be granted the same rights as nationals to free speech and assembly. This participatory notion of citizenship on the supranational level was steeped in a European outlook. The issue was what kind of rights and safeguards citizens ought to be granted as a consequence of deeper European integration. The committee subscribed to the view that citizens through institutional integration, policy harmonization, and open borders become potentially inscribed in each other’s political communities, while still having a primary belonging to their “original” community through national citizenship. As European citizens are affected not only by national politics in their homeland of legal citizenship, but also by Europeanized politics in potential countries of residence, the committee asserted the need for a renewed focus on rights that follow from transnational life across borders. Moreover, through encouraging the right of European citizens to vote in another member state in European parliamentary elections, a budding notion of a European demos was put forward. Evidently, “Europeanized” political rights were key to citizenship in the two reports of the Adonnino Committee. As this book has argued thus far, European citizenship discourse was clearly dynamic in the first three decades; it oscillated between not only elements of citizenship, but also different levels of politics. In the eyes of the Adonnino Committee, political participation on the member state level was explicitly linked with access for European citizens to voting rights on the local level. This was also one of the main points of the report on special rights from the mid-1970s. Yet, despite contributing to a conception of a European demos, the report was silent on the clearly more radical measure of granting political rights also on the national level as a realization of Europeanized supranational citizenship. This silence on the diffusion of political rights to include more than the local level indicates that the national retained a kind of primacy in conceptions of European citizenship. The clearly radical idea, then, of a postnational citizenship traversing across national frontiers and surpassing the boundaries of political communities through European rights did not transform to any significant extent the reality of institutionalized citizenship in nation-states (see Brubaker 1992: 180–1). What the committee did was to underscore the end of “insulated” political citizenship within discrete political communities. The compound, multinational, and multilevel nature of European integration has real consequences for citizens
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of the member states. The Adonnino Committee followed the efforts of the 1970s in attempting to clarify what such consequences should bring about in terms of rights politics. The answer was for European institutions to focus on political rights, and civil rights such as the rights of assembly and free speech. As if emphasizing the symbolic import of introducing rights of nonnationals to free speech and assembly within the European context was not enough, the Adonnino Committee ended its two reports with measures geared toward the image and identity of the Community. These amounted to, among other things, tangible imagery such as a European flag, an anthem and finally standardized sign-posting at the internal and external borders of the Community. As these proposals make clear, the issue of identity—of what draws a community of citizens together—was subsumed by the perceived import of imagery and symbols. Indeed, the image(s) of Europe have been criticized for being overtly benign and symbolic, and thereby facilitating the evasion of the real issues and problems of European integration (see e.g. Shore 2000). These proposals were symptomatic of Shore’s point. Bringing in nation-state “imitation” to the debate on European unification did not prompt further discussion on European identity as an identity of citizens constituting a political or cultural community. The “high politics” agenda of the European identity declared in 1973 was not amplified as such, but an alternative notion of identity as tangible for individuals/community was not suggested or even addressed as a possibility. Rather, it was all about portraying and presenting (not representing) the existence of the EC to the public. Furthermore, the issue of identity was linked to the Declaration on the European Identity, without further notions of what would draw the community of European citizens together. In laying the ground for “A People’s Europe,” the Adonnino Committee further brought out the concept of identity in conjunction with the proposed strengthening of the Community’s image. Thus, identity remained on the level of declaratory and symbolic politics of the entity vis-à-vis external actors. The more concrete elements of citizenship proposed by the reports thus linked up with already evolving practices rather than nascent ideas for a radically new conception of European citizenship. The conception of citizenship by no means reached a radically new phase with the project on “A People’s Europe.” The piecemeal developments of previous years of legislation, declaratory politics, and judicial activism were built upon to amplify rather uncontroversial measures for
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empowering European citizens. The potential of Europeans’ right to have rights in political terms even in national elections was bypassed and left silent. Furthermore, notions of what could bring these European rights-holders together were largely left open. Thus, the conception of political citizenship that transpired was rather limited in terms of its final scope. Further, it is worth noting that once again, the status of individuals was unequivocally linked to the principle of free movement. It was also brought up explicitly as a corollary to bringing about a Europe sans frontiéres through a single market.
The Single European Act: Explicit Citizenship Politics Brought to a Halt The impetus of creating a borderless and single internal market building on the common market achieved in 1968 is widely attributed to the SEA signed in 1986 (see Moravcsik 1998: 314).4 The immediate historical backdrop of the SEA was the Stuttgart Declaration,5 the committee reports on “A People’s Europe,” the Commission’s “White Paper on Completing the Internal Market”,6 and the EP’s efforts of democratization through a European constitution.7 The SEA was the first major revision of the legal and institutional framework provided by the founding treaties. As with both the ECSC and Rome treaties, individual rights, citizenship, and belonging were dealt with indirectly. This is perhaps unsurprising from the mainstream perspectives of Treaty change, that is, the enabling of consensus through intergovernmental bargaining on the issues that “really mattered.” The most important issue for the Commission and many member states was to reinforce the European economy through further market liberalization. Identity and citizenship were seemingly superfluous in the pursuit of such policy goals. Nevertheless, citizenship and contiguous issues had been on the agenda in the preceding one and a half decades. A basic starting point of this book is, moreover, that citizenship is a phenomenon that does not develop in (legal) isolation, but is always (re)interpreted in specific political developments and contexts. The SEA was exactly a key chapter in such developments. The negotiations were set up to deal inter alia with institutional reform and policy issues pertaining to the creation of a single market wherein free movement was a major “building block.” In discursive terms, then, the SEA affected European citizenship both in its policy focus and identity omissions; it was another crucial step on the way to the culmination in
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institutional terms when citizenship was inscribed institutionally at the Maastricht IGC. Initial evidence for the substance of “silent” citizenship in the SEA is found—as with the founding treaties—in the rather elevated declarations of its preamble. From the get-go, the preamble made a direct link to the aim of a European Union, in accordance with the Stuttgart Declaration. In Stuttgart, the heads of governments solemnly pronounced that the future of Europe should be built on its common destiny by affirming the European identity (of the Copenhagen Summit of 1973) as well as respect for representative democracy and human rights. In the SEA, this was copied to a large extent, clearly connecting the impetus of a single market with broader issues of unifying Europe.8 But, where did further issues of citizenship figure in these declarations of intent for European integration writ large? On the whole, citizenship was featured implicitly in affirmations of promoting democracy based on “fundamental rights recognized in the constitutions and laws of the Member States, in the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the European Social Charter.” Citizenship rights did not have an original place in the Treaty construction of the SEA, but were rather by-products of a certain “constitutional synthesis” (see Fossum and Menéndez 2011) that emphasized the multilevel and multinational character of European rights proliferation. And the fundamental rights in question? These were “freedom, equality and social justice.” Thus, rights were not only unoriginal in a strict Community sense, but were also pigeon-holed as part of the largely symbolic expression of respect for democracy. A further clue to the largely silent issue of citizenship, as significant per se on the supranational level in this setting, was visible in the assertion that new developments corresponded with the “wishes of the democratic peoples of Europe, for whom the European Parliament, elected by universal suffrage, is an indispensable means of expression.” Citizens were perceived as members of political communities on the nation-state level, rather than having an independent status in the legitimation of European politics. In citizenship discourse, this outcome of Treaty change followed the market track of European integration. As a result, path dependence was persistent in terms of market citizenship, while the path of political citizenship and identity came to the end, albeit temporarily in the SEA. It can be argued that this is not of special importance for our appraisal of the discursive properties that have produced European citizenship as we know it after the defunct European Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty.
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Political citizenship came to the fore in a much more professed manner already in the Maastricht Treaty. My point here is that the halting of political citizenship in the SEA—immediately after a highly politicized debate in the Parliament on a constitution for Europe—underscores the predominance of market underpinnings throughout European citizenship debates. Political citizenship was “dead” in the SEA. The major “players” in the political game over the EC’s Treaty future focused on “frontier freedom” and economic liberalism. The declaratory claims of the preamble gave way to the rather more legalistic and formalistic language of the Act itself. Its amending character further meant that on many counts, it did not bring forward novel pronouncements, but rather measures that modified features of institutions and procedures. Still, by adding titles on Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and certain aspects of social policy, the SEA contributed to the often asserted “deepening” of European integration. Again, citizenship did not figure prominently. In Article 13, the aim of a single, internal market was specified. Among other things, the free movement of persons was attached explicitly to this aim. There was, however, no specification in the Treaty text as to which categories of persons could enjoy such mobility rights. Furthermore, the extent to which the concept of person would surpass the conception of citizens as workers—however defined in the founding treaties and extended through legislation and case law— was not taken into consideration in the SEA. The upshot of this is that the SEA followed the well-known path of linking the aim of an internal market and the free movement of persons. The crucial membership element of citizenship and access to rights was accrued as an effect of forging economic policies, not an independent citizenship policy outside that of state membership. The omission of specifying which persons could be considered as members in such a market polity should, however, not be treated as some mysterious phenomenon. The framework of market integration that was dictated by the Treaty of Rome and subsequent policy practices established individual membership within European integration as based mainly on work and to some extent residence, and nationality. By not delving into such questions, the SEA did not provide a template for change of European citizenship. At this point, then, the member states agreed to institutionalize the market polity and its wider effects “beyond” the market. Yet, they did for the time being retain control over policy-making on mobility rights. While the SEA opened for increased use of qualified majority voting (QMV) and thus encroaching state sovereignty this was not accepted
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in cases of mobility. In institutional terms, Article 18 stated that issues related to the approximation of national laws and administrative action in the field of free movement of persons and the rights and interests of employed persons were not to be decided by QMV.9 In addition to not dealing with membership, rights issues remained solely on the declaratory level of the preamble and did not add any significant measures to the concrete developments of the 1970s. Lastly, identity and participation were on the whole not addressed by the SEA. There was a brief allusion to participation in the acknowledgment of the EP as a means of expression in the determination of the will of the peoples of Europe regarding the future path to be taken by the integration process. In terms of adding elements of a more pronounced European citizenship this did not amount to much. The lack of uniform, Europewide elections that possibly could have augmented active participation on the part of citizens was not addressed in the SEA. This brief analysis testifies that the SEA for the most part was silent on issues of citizenship. One can only speculate on the reasons for this. Perhaps the status of individuals was seen as already settled within the efforts of integration between economies and markets? The member states—as “masters of the treaties”—affirmed the long-standing conception of citizens as rights-holders in a market polity. Implicitly, the Commission supported such a stance at this juncture as its main aim was to finally achieve the internal market (see Dinan 2004: 216–19). Such a “hiding” of citizenship issues went against the endeavors of the EP from the 1960s onwards to increase its institutional powers and to create additional rights for citizens and a genuine political space on the supranational level through uniform European elections.10 Until the time of the SEA, European citizenship discourse had its high watermark at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s with extensive legislation and discussion on voting rights, so-called special rights, a Europe of “no borders,” and constitutionalizing European citizenship. These issues were added to legislation that had established the basic tenets regarding free movement of workers and to some extent persons. Against this backdrop, the SEA brought the citizenship discourse to a halt. The individual citizen and her place within an increasingly integrated Europe was not brought into the fray when the founding treaties were amended for the first time. But, the “freezing” of the discourse was only temporary. In fact, parallel to and following the work on the SEA, already initiated policy proposals were being dealt with through various channels of law- and policy-making of the European polity.
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The Schengen Agreement: Borderless Europe, (Trans)national Citizenship In 1985, the BeNeLux, Germany, and France signed the so-called Schengen Agreement.11 At the time, this agreement was not a part of the legal framework of the Community.12 Still, it can be argued to have been of import for the discourse on European citizenship (Maas 2005a: 241–2; Wiener 1998: 130). In fact, in the preamble to the Schengen Agreement, it was explicitly expressed that “the ever closer union of the peoples of the Member States of the European Communities should find its expression in the freedom to cross internal borders for all nationals of the Member States.” Thus, there was a clear connection between this intergovernmental agreement and free movement as a core principle of European integration with regard to the relations between its institutions and individual citizens. As regards elements of citizenship more concretely, it also confirmed that the beneficiaries of a borderless Europe would be the member state nationals. This is not surprising, as “the EC was set up as a primarily economic construct and its founding treaties contained no provisions regarding the individual rights of third country nationals not resident in one of the Member States” (Lavenex 2001: 858). In Article 17 this was further augmented by explicating the need for the dual measures of safeguarding internal security while at the same time preventing illegal immigration by third-country nationals. And, the subsequent “Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement” from 1990 underscored this by defining as an alien “any person other than a national of a Member State of the European Communities.”13 In Article 2 (Title II) of the Convention it was further stated that free movement across borders could be curbed for reasons of public policy or national security. Such a limitation on the abolishment of borders between states was clearly reminiscent of the restrictions laid out by the Adonnino Committee with regard to the proposal on a general right of residence. In Article 19 (Title II) of the Convention, aliens were given the right to free movement across state borders insofar as their entry into the host state was legal. Thus, by raising the issue regarding movement of thirdcountry nationals, the Schengen acquis contributed to the question of inclusiveness connected to the principle of free movement. Yet, as Wiener (1998: 223) argues, Schengen did not logically link a notion of no internal frontiers with an absence of border checks. Opening up European borders also to third-country nationals would imply that movement rights
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were no longer tied exclusively to individual membership as it had been constructed until that time. In Article 22, however, this right of aliens to move freely was made subject to a requirement of reporting to the authorities of the second country upon entry. This considerably curbed the right of movement in practical terms compared to the one enjoyed by European citizens. Guiraudon (2003: 264) has argued that this was linked to a predominant discourse regarding Schengen that held that “free movement within the EC required compensatory measures at the external borders.” By explicitly privileging European citizens as insiders in this sense, the Schengen Agreement did, therefore, not go far in challenging the modality of individual membership in bounded communities and resulting rights increasingly grounded on national citizenship in the first three decades of European integration. This demonstrates that the concept of citizenship was not addressed explicitly within the basic architecture of the Schengen acquis. The thrust of Schengen with regard to conceptions of citizenship was linked to the principle of free movement and the aim of a borderless Europe. In terms of contributing to the discourse, the introduction of a more pronounced institutional framework for dealing with internal border-crossing through Schengen, amplified free movement as the core of conceptions of European citizenship. As regards the construction of specific rights linked to this principle, Schengen did not add significant measures compared to the practices of free movement legislation in the 1960s/1970s. It rather pointed out that the aim of a borderless Europe not only needed individual rights based on a free movement principle, but also practical measures to facilitate the movement of citizens within Europe. The major contribution of Schengen was to bring forward the issue of the relative significance of insiders and outsiders. Territorial borders between states also signify the borders between communities based on national citizenship. By advocating the removal of such borders, the Schengen Agreement did not push the case for a European citizenship that would have superseded national citizenship institutions, and thus have changed its conceptual path. The framing of individual rights in the Schengen Agreement was consistent with the propensity to derive the European status on state membership, which had been a lasting feature of European citizenship discourse, especially from the 1970s onwards. It is, therefore, not surprising that this was also the basis for granting individuals the right to move freely within the Schengen area. Notwithstanding the granting of freedom of movement to third-country nationals, by not giving them the same status as insiders, the Schengen
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Agreement drew a relatively clear distinction between who would be seen as members and hence also nonmembers. The upshot of this is that, through Schengen, a conception of European citizenship as (trans)national in its core features was revealed. At the outset—through the radical measure of weakening national borders and jurisdictions—such an agreement had potentially powerful consequences in both theoretical and practical terms. Territorial exclusivity and control has, after all, been one of the defining features of the modern state as a political community (see Weber 1978: 902–4). But, by linking the unconditional right to cross national borders to a specified set of insiders clearly distinguished from outsiders, the truly postnational and potentially cosmopolitan character of the arrangement was circumvented. The duality of internal inclusion and external exclusion known from the social closure of modern citizenship (Brubaker 1992) was, therefore, in one sense reproduced on the European level through Schengen. On the one hand, it created a transnational community on the inside of a region consisting of previously bordered nation-states. On the other hand, this community was, however, genuinely transnational only for the designated insiders. Under Schengen, borders would still have a real significance for outsiders by imposing limits to their movement. More concretely, these limits were linked to a “securitizing” frame that was to bolster internal security through limitations in, for instance, the access to EU territory and the rights of movement of third-country nationals such as asylum seekers (Geddes 2001: 24, 29–30; Huysmans 2006; Lavenex 2001: 858–9). Thus, notwithstanding the importance of facilitating a borderless community, its internal effects tell us something about the conception of citizenship that it produces. Its external effects are equally important for understanding how it creates boundaries of citizenship in that specific political and legal system. I will, therefore, argue that the properties of the Schengen Agreement have amplified some previous findings of this book, namely, the increasing propensity over time to ground and restrict European rights and participation— generally linked to free movement across national borders—on national citizenship and state membership.
Free Movement Legislation: Residence Rights Back in Play In the same period as the Schengen Agreement was reached, the EC worked on finalizing legislation on free movement that had been in
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the system since the end of the 1970s. This culminated in the passing of three directives in 1990, and one additional in 1993.14 The core of these directives was the matter of residence.15 The preambles of the directives significantly linked the issue of residence with the widely stated aim within European integration of “the abolition, as between member states, of obstacles to freedom of movement for persons.” Not only that, the preambles also related the issue of residence to the completion of the internal market. As was shown earlier, in the Treaty of Rome and the first legislative acts on free movement, the concrete right of European citizens to reside in second countries was unequivocally linked to their status as workers. Continued residence in host state was also contingent on previous occupation in that territory. In the preamble of Directive 90/365/EEC this was changed. The right of residence was no longer made contingent upon the worker’s previous exercise of free movement to take up occupation in another member state: “it is desirable that this right of residence also be granted to persons who have ceased their occupational activity even if they have not exercised their right to freedom of movement during their working life.” When linking the spirit of these legislative acts further with its ramifications for the individual citizen, the Council expressed the conviction that the right of residence “can only be genuinely exercised if it is also granted to members of the family.” In the concretization of this conviction, all three directives granted the right of residence to such family members irrespective of their nationality.16 These pieces of legislation brought two things to the fore in European citizenship discourse. First, specific rights were increasingly opened up for certain categories of non-EU citizens. Secondly, the worker-citizen became less significant for the bestowal of European rights. Regarding the exclusiveness of rights, in the first instance, the ever-present grounding of European membership and rights on nationality was retained. Yet, the directives made it clear that European rights are available also to noncitizens related to a principal rights-holder, that is, a European citizen. Obviously, this did not transform the notion of individual membership within the European polity as the right to residence of noncitizens was made contingent in this sense. But, the legislation did not restrict the rights of these third-country nationals to simply reside on European territory. It also gave them the right to take up work after residence has been attained. Thus, through the backdoor, so to say, non-EU citizens were bestowed the same rights as European citizens to work within the single market.
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In addition to this residence-based right to take up an occupation, work in itself was also made less pervasive as a criterion for individual membership. This book has, in particular from the first period of European integration, made evident that the notion of work was crucial to conceptions of citizenship. It was through her potential capacity as a worker that a member state citizen was granted rights on the European level. By 1990, this was still a significant element of European citizenship, as the directives analyzed here attest to. They did, however, make clear that free movement was not only for workers, but also for persons by rendering the right of residence also to individuals who had not worked within the territory of the given member state. This not only broadened the notion of membership to citizens as such, but also implied that participation as a worker was no longer as fundamental to the conception of European citizenship. The market prerogative of the integration process and its ramifications for citizenship was less pervasive than before. In this sense, the issue of identity—largely silenced in explicit terms throughout the process until the 1990s—was implicitly brought to a new level. To be sure, one cannot impute the emergence of a thick identity akin to national identities based on a shared language or history through the extension of rights to encompass persons and not only workers. Still, the directives made clear that the kind of community that citizenship rights were linked to would no longer be grounded solely on the market. Of course, the free movement legislation of this period did not lead to the disappearance of market citizenship from the discourse. It was rather complemented by a conception that linked individuals and the European project through their rights to reside within the territory of the supranational polity; a stance that would prove sticky and salient when citizenship finally became citizenship with a capital “C” in the Maastricht IGC, that is, an explicit category in the official vocabulary and the fundamental principles of the new Union.
Conclusion In a period marked by the diverse attempts of reviving market integration through the SEA, building the image and identity of the European project through the efforts on “A People’s Europe,” and the intergovernmental agreement on a borderless Europe signed at Schengen, European citizenship was both consolidated and at the same time to some extent changed in some of its key properties. The most tangible
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changes were not, however, linked to the SEA, Schengen, or the efforts of the Adonnino Committee, but rather to the evolving practices of free movement legislation and principles, courtesy mainly of the Council. There is something indefinite about a conclusion in this vein. What was more important? Consolidation or change? Rather than picking a winner in such a contest, I argue that this mixed conclusion indeed highlights a main theme of this book. The postwar vision of a borderless and integrated market in Europe was imparted in the rights of member state citizens from the very beginning of European unification. Despite policy developments and identity projects that have pointed in political and cultural directions, this market polity has never been abandoned in European politics. In this perspective, the market citizenship of the founding treaties has always come first in European citizenship developments. The strengthening of free movement in Schengen and a single market in the SEA solidified transnational citizenship based on rights that have their origins in economic integration. The rights linked to crossborder movement between European nation-states as a market actor had prevalence over political participation on all levels for European citizens. Symptomatically, then, as the SEA was a Treaty-amending venture laying the ground for creating a truly internal European market, it stayed silent on most issues pertaining to citizenship apart from the usual allusions to free movement as a core integration principle. The changes and moves toward personhood and a basic right to residence on European territory were, however, not entirely detached from the core tenets of transnational citizenship. Through their family relation to an EU citizen, non-EU citizens were in fact conferred the right to reside within any member state based on the right of the principal rights-holder. Not only that, the participation in the market as a worker was made less crucial to the status of the individual within the system. Previous work within the host state was no longer crucial to obtain the right to continue residence. Indeed, these developments point to a conception of European citizenship as personal, akin to what has been called a notion of “citizens-as-human beings” (Meehan 1993: 147). Nevertheless, without the prior institutionalization of free movement as the core of European citizenship, access to rights based on personhood rather than a specific Europeanized notion of “workfare” would not have materialized. After all, the struggle to “universalize” (as far as possible) residence rights was premised on the unmistakable “trans” dimension of citizenship rights in Europe. In essence, until the dawn of Union at the beginning of the 1990s, European citizenship was firmly relying on movement
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across borders. In this sense, personhood was also closely linked to the market logic of where individual citizens fitted into the architecture of European policies and institutions. The developments of this “intermediate” decade in citizenship-discursive terms between special rights debates of the 1970s and the Maastricht debacle of the 1990s were then clearly symptomatic of the “in-between” character citizenship “beyond the nation-state.” This book started out with the assertion that citizenship outside the frame of bounded state membership will always be contingent on the interplay between novel ideas, political projects, and already existing institutional arrangements, on the national and supranational levels alike. This is exactly where the initially “dry” Treaty changes of the SEA, the bureaucratic language of Schengen, and the fresh ideas of reviving residence rights as a core of individual rights in free movement legislation located citizenship. It was both to be understood as a transboundary entitlement based on member state citizenship, and an increasingly independent right of residence that would surpass the temporary status of the “dweller” in modern labor migration.
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Chapter 5
The Maastricht Process
Fresh from the momentum of the SEA and renewed belief in the forging of an internal market, the EC embarked on another Treaty revision adventure in the final months of the 1980s. It was not evident at the outset that this process would include citizenship as a central issue. In fact, the IGC was at first set up to deal with the issue of an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Soon, however, the “sleeping” issue of creating a political union in Europe would be resurrected by a host of actors, both in European institutions and among the member states. Initially an idea promoted by the Spanish government and supported by the EP as well as the Commission, citizenship became a “dark horse” in the Maastricht negotiations. After a debate saturated by radical proposals and the belief that citizenship could be part of the solution to the democratic deficit in European integration, the citizenship forged in the Maastricht IGC in the end followed largely in the footsteps of earlier conceptions of rights and citizenship. Yet, this was a remarkable event in the history of European integration as the concept of citizenship conventionally has been held to be relevant only within the nation-state frame. With the advent of the territorial nation-state following the French Revolution, “citizenship, patriotism and nationhood were no longer separate ideas” (Heater 1999: 97). Going beyond such historical description, authors like Miller (2000: 83–4), Schnapper (1997: 202), and Shore (2004: 31, 38) have argued that there is an intangible link between viable political citizenship and the nation-state form of political order. It is not surprising, then, that explicit citizenship prompted a diversity of positions. Among legal and constitutional scholars, the thinness of legal provisions regarding Union citizenship was highlighted (see e.g. Closa 1992; d’Oliveira 1995; O’Keeffe 1994). Yet, there was not agreement as to what such a thin status entailed for European citizens, and on its potential for changing European citizenship discourse. For
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instance, Closa (1992: 1168–9) and O’Keeffe (1994: 106) highlighted its dynamism, holding that it had the potential to strengthen the rights catalog in future legal or political developments, while d’Oliveira (1995: 82–3) saw it as a “pie in the sky” lacking real access to political influence for citizens. Others focused more on its potential impact on European integration writ large (see e.g. Eder and Giesen 2001; Habermas 1992; 2000; Kostakopoulou 2001; Meehan 1993; Preuss 1998a; Schmitter 2000; Shore 2004; Weiler 1999). To exemplify, some commentators focused on its potential for developing genuine belonging—a European political identity—between citizens in the European polity (Eder and Giesen 2001: 2–3; Kostakopoulou 2001: ch. 2). Habermas (2000: 99–103) held out the creation of European citizens as the most advanced example of the decoupling of citizenship from nationality, thereby creating the impetus for a postnationalization of European institutions. Conversely, it was also argued that Union citizenship did not add much to the real issues of European integration due to its symbolism and lack of preconditions such as a shared identity and common public space that some find necessary for the viability of political order (see Shore 2004: 35–8). For Weiler (1999: 332), the official designation of Union citizenship was “banal.” Yet, he saw in it the possibility of saving European integration from a “statal, unitary vision,” through focusing on the notion of “multiple demoi” (ibid.: 344). The introduction of citizenship crystallized what Weiler saw as the principal idea of European unification, that is, to overcome the perverted effects of nationalism, rather than creating a unitary European demos. While “revolutionary” in the sense that explicit citizenship outside the nation-state frame was unprecedented, but in the end “locked in” by initial decisions and integration discourse, the Maastricht Process is clearly the center-piece of European citizenship politics. Some would argue that it was the end point of a protracted process of linking citizens and European institutions more closely together. To the contrary this chapter highlights the politics of citizenship in the European setting. Citizenship in the EU—as in any polity—is a constant source for political ideas, reform proposals, and struggles over the meaning of political community in European integration. This was especially visible in the Maastricht IGC. As we will see in later chapters, the chosen solution on citizenship “beyond the nation-state” at this critical juncture of European integration had ramifications for debates on EU democracy, constitution, European identity, and third-country nationals.
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From Amending the SEA to Achieving Political Union At the Strasbourg European Council1 in December 1989, the heads of governments emphasized that there had been a long-standing aim in the integration process of achieving a European Union. This was seen as continuation of the SEA and linked mainly to the completion of an internal market, or in the words of the presidency conclusions: “an area without internal frontiers.” Yet, not only issues of importance for market integration were brought forward at the Strasbourg European Council. It was underlined that one should adopt measures in the economic and social spheres that would enable citizens to recognize their belonging to the European entity. After 30 odd years of integration and revival of the single market there was, thus, a perception among European elites that something lacked in terms of the link between the European institutions that “produced” integrative policies and the citizens who “enjoyed” the benefits of them. In the EP, the so-called Martin I Report2 argued that progress toward a citizen’s Europe had been “extremely limited, notably due to the lack of provisions of the treaties enabling progress to be made in this field.”3 As a remedy for this perceived problem, the report urged that the forthcoming IGC ought to go further than issues of the EMU, by forging a “European Union of a federal type.” And finally, the EP called for a Declaration on fundamental rights to be included into the treaties. Clearly, then, the EP raised the ante on the political dimension of a process that initially was to be about the final stage of achieving an internal market within Europe. The initiative to elevate the political dimension of the IGC was followed up by several other actors. Some governments provided memoranda4 where they advocated the need for a political union that would complement the EMU. They further brought forward several issues related to citizenship such as free movement rights, local voting rights in second countries, and accession to the European Convention on Human Rights. These ideas were, however, initially presented without explicitly addressing the issue of citizenship. In fact, it would take a surprising governmental initiative for citizenship to enter the reform agenda. The concept of citizenship was introduced into the IGC debates by the Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez. In a letter5 to the Irish presidency, Gonzalez argued that European citizenship ought to be one of the three pillars upon which a European Union would be constructed.
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More concretely, the proposal argued that such a European citizenship ought to be built on unlimited freedom of movement, establishment, and access to employment, as well as voting rights on the local level. After this initiative, citizenship became a “sticky” issue. It is, for instance, interesting to note that in the Belgian memorandum that preceded the Gonzalez letter, the concept of citizenship was not raised, while in the Greek memorandum that followed in its immediate aftermath, it was argued that the concept of the European citizen should be brought into the treaty framework. Moreover, this assertion was raised as an issue of identity: “to strengthen [the] citizen’s feelings of belonging”6 to the EC. When the decision was finally made to convene an additional IGC on Political Union at the Dublin European Council,7 citizenship was put to the forefront of significant issues for the future of European integration. Indeed, the Reflection Group comprised of the EC’s foreign ministers argued that the IGC should discuss how the purported Union would include and extend the notion of what they called Community citizenship.8 In so doing, these reflections underlined that such an extended citizenship on the European level first and foremost might carry with it specific human, social, and political rights, as well as the right of free movement and residence. This focus on rights was also evident at the Dublin European Council, where it was emphasized that a fundamental objective of European integration was “the promotion of the rights, freedoms and welfare of the individual citizen.”9 As we have seen, the initial phase of negotiations on a new Treaty prompted manifold ideas on how to forge a Union, both among European-level institutions and the member states. Interestingly, the EP continued to seek influence on the proceedings by advocating concepts and initiatives that would bring the EC closer to a “statist” vision. In the Martin II Report,10 for instance, the EP argued again for changes to the Treaty framework through a “constitution.” Within this new constitutional framework for a European Union, citizenship was deemed to be of central importance through voting rights in second countries as well as the adoption of a “bill of rights” for the European polity. It was also argued that the rights focus ought to be widened considerably, through the institutionalization of a “social citizenship” based on wider, transnational access to an array of social rights for European citizens. The call for turning the Treaty into an EU constitution to amplify the democratic legitimacy of European institutions was also raised in the Colombo Report.11 Moreover, the participatory element evident in the Martin reports through the emphasis on voting rights was amplified in this
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report through an argument on the requirement of active political participation on the part of citizens for the democratic legitimacy of the system. It was, however, the Spaniards who once again upped the ante on citizenship in the Maastricht Process. In their proposal on citizenship,12 the Spanish government started out by claiming that integration had until then had limited effect on citizens as such, due to the predominant economic mode of integration. Within the framework of economic integration, it was stated, European citizens were at best “privileged aliens.”13 Consequently, it was argued that if European integration was to reach the stage of a political union, it required the establishment of a European citizenship for the nationals of the member states. This citizenship was at the outset perceived to be both internal and external with respect to demarcating the boundaries of a European polity. Internally, it was held to yield special rights and duties that would be specific to the nature of the Union as a dynamic and evolving process of integration. Externally, it was suggested that such a European citizenship status could possibly be articulated through a right to diplomatic and consular assistance also by the Union via other member states. This further linked to the membership issue. In the Spanish proposal, what had previously been assumed was now asserted explicitly: that European citizenship should be granted only to the nationals of member states. Thus, also within the preparatory phase of the Maastricht Process, the nationality principle prevailed as the frame through which members and nonmembers were to be differentiated. The originality of the Spanish proposal was to argue for European citizenship as something more than a mere side-effect of prior citizenship on the national level. It was held to be an evolving concept and institution that one could not push forward without taking the development of integration as such into account. This dynamism was moreover linked to an “ultimate aim of the right to political participation [that] would have to be full electoral participation by the European citizen at his place of residence.”14 Accordingly, in this conception, European citizenship would provide political rights also on the national level, in addition to local and European elections. This was potentially a radical development and a profound change to political space as we know it, as political rights in general elections on the national level have been held—both in theory and practice—to be linked exclusively to the possession of national citizenship.15 Indeed, some would argue that the exclusivity of voting rights on the national level is
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the final barrier before “citizenship” loses its significance (see e.g. Thaa 2001). If not subscribing to the “myth of full citizenship” (Cohen 2009), giving noncitizens an array of rights, but excluding them from voting rights clearly highlights the idea that there is an inevitable, exclusive, and symbiotic relationship between citizenship and political community in modern nation-states. The debate on European citizenship would, however, not revolutionize citizenship as we know it. In the last phase of preparation before the IGC, what mainly stuck was not the idea of full political citizenship in the EU, notwithstanding the support of the Commission on the Spanish proposal,16 but rather the more general understanding of citizenship as necessary for the achievement of a political union. The final democratic boundary of nation-states—exclusive voting rights in general elections— was upheld by the member states. They did not wish to cede control over their political community by admitting noncitizens to the core of their democratic systems. Having turned down this postnationalization of political rights, at the Rome European Council in October 199017 the member state governments shifted their focus on the more ambiguous aim of providing democratic legitimacy for the Union through some form of European citizenship. In the Danish memorandum that sought to intervene in the debates at this stage, citizenship was in fact not addressed explicitly. Yet, in terms of political rights, it suggested that one should retain a focus on local and European voting rights. The issue of democratic legitimacy was, however, of greater importance also in the Danish intervention, with a special emphasis on the role of the EP as well as national parliaments. Thus, the focus on political participation and democratic legitimacy on the European level was here more of an intergovernmental matter, in clear contrast to the supranational and individualist approach of the Spanish proposal on citizenship. Within this phase the focus was, however, more on the formal political rights and the legitimizing promise of such rights for the system, than on actual political participation, as was very much the case in the Spinelli Project. The EP for its part also pushed the case for a stronger social rights component of European citizenship. The conception that finally originated from this phase was, however, not centered on such rights to any significant extent. Hence, the potential for a conception taking in more concrete elements in terms of rights failed. Also in this early phase of the Maastricht Process, conceptions did, then, not diverge radically from previous conceptions, notwithstanding the stronger focus on a political dimension of citizenship.
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Negotiating Union: Citizenship and Democratic Legitimacy At the Rome European Council in December 1990,18 the heads of governments first noted the consensus among the member states regarding inclusion of citizenship and democratic legitimacy19 as two of the main issues to be dealt with by the IGC.20 Democratic legitimacy was linked mainly to questions regarding the institutional interface of the EP, the Commission, and the Council with regard to appointments of political offices and the decision-making process. More acutely, concerning citizenship it was proposed that the IGC ought to consider civil rights (voting rights, political participation, etc.), social and economic rights (general right to freedom of movement and residence, equality of opportunity, etc.), and protection beyond European borders as the most important elements of European citizenship. Thus, at the beginning of the negotiations, the European Council reiterated features that had been addressed earlier, but still with a certain emphasis on rights in the outline of key issues regarding the institutionalization of citizenship linked to the European level. The juxtaposition of democratic legitimacy and citizenship was restated in the second Spanish proposal on citizenship21 that followed the Rome European Council. In fact, they were not only juxtaposed. An evolving, common citizenship was envisaged where the citizen “would be the very source of democratic legitimacy and a fundamental pillar of the Union”22 and be granted Treaty-specific rights and requisite obligations. In terms of specifying the particulars of such a citizenship, the nationality principle remained the basic criterion for membership. The rights to be granted were, however, conceived as additional to the rights that European citizens would enjoy as national citizens. Rights that had already been prevalent in the debates, such as free movement, residence, and consular protection as well as political rights were highlighted in the second Spanish proposal. In fact, the Spanish delegation proposed that political rights would give European citizens “the right to take part in the political life where he lives.”23 This was related, not only to voting rights, but also to political associations. Thus, a broader and more dynamic view of political rights emerged, which brought with it a notion of participation that was not limited to elections. With regard to electoral rights, the second Spanish proposal did, however, not reiterate its idea of a potential postnationalization of political citizenship on all levels of government in member states; it only advocated such rights in local and European elections.
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Also the Commission intervened in the negotiating phase with a comprehensive and substantive draft of provisions on European citizenship.24 In this draft, the focus was on the specific rights that would follow from a European citizenship status. Taking its cue from previous developments and endorsements regarding European citizenship,25 the Commission added cultural and environmental rights to those rights that had become prevalent through earlier initiatives. It also included the principle of nondiscrimination based on nationality as a citizenship right. In addition, it advocated the gradual development of social rights, also partly for third-country nationals residing within the boundaries of the European polity. The Commission also linked European citizenship to a notion of the strengthening of democratic legitimacy on the European level, both as a supplement to national citizenship and as a separate European concept. This more general assertion of the link between citizenship and the basic tenets of modern democratic constitutionalism was also underlined in the Bindi I Report from the EP, where citizenship was deemed an essential aspect of European integration.26 Besides its adherence to the typical European rights catalog, the report in fact argued that there was a need at the time, to facilitate the effective participation of citizens in decision-making processes; in clear contrast to the market orientation regarding participation in earlier periods of integration. In the sense that issues regarding work or the position of a market citizen were raised, it was as accompanied by a plea for making social rights more central for the status of individuals within European integration. In addition to the focus on the political (and social) aspects of rights and participation, the report also brought up the question of identity. It perceived of European citizens as belonging to a specific community that nevertheless was comprised of different cultures. The diverse cultural and political entities were then seen as brought together and safeguarded within the institutional framework of European integration, based on common values and interests shared by European citizens. This multilayered status was further emphasized as “genuine” and concrete in itself. Hence, also in this intervention by the EP, European citizenship was perceived as “something more” than just a complementary and minuscule status based on national citizenship. Based on the preparatory work, settled objectives for the IGC and the interinstitutional dialogue, the Luxembourg Presidency outlined a Draft Treaty.27 The Luxembourg Draft started out with the announcement that the Treaty marked a new stage in the creation of a Union with a federal
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goal. It also asserted that a basic aim of the Treaty was to reinforce the protection of the rights and interests of citizenship through the insertion of a section on Union citizenship. Yet, the insertion of a separate title did not follow up the quite extensive aims asserted earlier in the Maastricht debates. The proposed provisions on citizenship were clearly “watered down” in comparison to many previous interventions and ideas. Emphasis was put on the additionality of such as status as well as rights being derived from the treaties, rather than separately connected to a free-standing European citizenship. Not surprisingly, then, this was lamented by the Bindi II Report from the EP,28 which more or less reiterated the main points of its first report. The lack of convergence with the views of the IGC negotiators did not, however, deter the EP from advocating even more measures that would have created a much more independent European citizenship than the one that the member states seemed to advocate as negotiations approached their end. In fact, the report concretely proposed a “Union membership policy”29 that would radically alter the determination of “who the Europeans are” in terms of the access to membership and rights. Union competence in this field was perceived by the EP to be an encroachment on the sovereignty of member states in decisions regarding their political community, as well as the creation of an independent citizenship status on the European level. Not only that, it was advocated that the Union ought to have competence in decisions on the rights status of resident persons on its territory, including noncitizens and their relation to European institutions. These issues were clearly linked to the further assertion that an essential element of citizenship was the creation of a genuine political relationship with the relevant institutions of an EU. This forceful intervention on the part of the only popularly elected Euroinstitution highlights the potential “reshuffling” of the cards of European integration in this period. Citizenship became the ultimate symbol for such efforts in the Maastricht Process. The disaggregation of the triad of citizenship, nation, and state was seen as an actual possibility and not just a utopian vision, both by the EP at this juncture and as we have seen by some member state governments in the build-up to the Maastricht IGC. In the end, however, the idea to institutionalize an independent European-level citizenship did not come to fruition. In the final Draft Treaty presented at the Maastricht Summit,30 federal Europe was, for instance, avoided. What remained, then, was to proclaim an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.” As negotiations approached
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the end and consensus had to be reached on an acceptable draft for all member states, it is perhaps not surprising that citizenship was not denationalized to the extent that the EU would gain independent decision-making powers on matters of inclusion and exclusion of citizens. Controlling access to citizenship is not only about ingrained nation-state institutions insulated against change, it is also about power, politics, and economy. Through their final disavowal of radical proposals at the start of the Maastricht Process, the member states made clear that they are not willing to surrender this for a “grand” European vision.
Union Citizenship: The Fundamentals of Explicit Citizenship in the EU “Citizenship of the Union” or as it is most often called “Union citizenship” became the official name of explicit citizenship in European integration. In the finished Treaty, citizens were brought to the fore as loci of European integration already in the preamble, in clear contrast to the founding treaties as well as the SEA. Notwithstanding the usual assertions of peace and stability in a formerly war-ridden Europe, some more specific aims were outlined. Connecting the integration project to individuals, the preamble for instance stated the aim “to establish a citizenship common to nationals of their countries [the member states].” This was reiterated in Article B of the treaty, where the establishment of citizenship on the European level was related to strengthening the rights of European citizens as one basic objective of the Union. This was unprecedented in the Treaty basis for European integration. Further, free movement of persons was underlined as a basic aim of the treaty. The core of Union citizenship was spelt out in a specific section of the treaty.31 To start out, what Closa (1992: 1160) has called “additionality” was underlined in Article 8(1): “Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union.” Thus, it was stated from the outset that this would not entail a free-standing European citizenship status. It was rather based on prior inclusion and national citizenship. As if this was not enough, in a separate declaration of the treaty,32 it was emphasized that whenever nationals of member states were the subject of Treaty provisions, “the question whether an individual possesses the nationality of a Member State shall be settled solely by reference to the national law of the Member State concerned.” Through this declaration, the newly founded Union thus preempted itself from direct
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political integration with regard to citizenship institutions and the possibility of subsequent harmonization regarding membership norms. Thus, on two separate occasions, the Treaty sought to make clear that there was no independent European citizenship at stake here. The membership of individuals was to be built on the foundations of deep-rooted citizenship politics on the national level. The importance of citizenship for the member states was, then, not only visible in the rejection of radical proposals and ideas in the build-up to the Treaty, but also in the Treaty itself. No doubts were to be admitted on who decides on individual membership also within the sphere of supranational integration. Through this now Treaty-based nationality principle, the preeminence of rights issues as the core of citizenship on the supranational level becomes even clearer. In earlier periods, individual rights were scattered throughout the treaties as well as in pieces of secondary legislation. With the Maastricht Treaty, rights became more pronounced by linking certain rights directly to the status of Union citizenship. Substantively, the rights attached to Union citizenship were the following: z z z z z
Rights of free movement and residence (Article 8a) Voting rights and the right to stand as candidate in municipal elections in country of residence (Article 8b(1)) Voting rights and the right to stand as candidate in European elections in country of residence (Article 8b(2)) The right of diplomatic protection and assistance in third countries where the citizen’s own country is not represented (Article 8c) The right of petition to a European Ombudsman (Article 8d)
Most of this short catalog of rights was, however, in place already prior to Union citizenship. Previous chapters have highlighted how rights of free movement had been pervasive throughout the history of European integration, while the issue of explicit residence rights was of more recent origin through secondary legislation in the beginning of the 1990s. By linking the right of residence to such a status, personhood became even more amplified as a foundation for the attainment of an individual status in relation to the European polity. Yet, in contrast to arguments advocating a shift from nationality toward personhood in postwar rights discourses (see Soysal 1994), personhood in the EU was clearly linked to the nationality principle. European voting rights had been in place since 1976. Thus, the new elements here were local voting rights in second countries, as well as the
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rights of diplomatic protection and forwarding petitions to the European Ombudsman. The granting of political rights on the local and European levels underlined the transnational features of European citizenship. Not only did it create specific rights on the supranational level, it also privileged European citizens within the political community of other member states. As has been shown earlier in this book, on the political level, this privileged semicitizenship was at the core of the discourse in the 1970s, but was not implemented with the exception for voting rights in the elections to the EP. Part of the real influence of Union citizenship, then, was that the idea of such a privileged status cross-cutting boundaries between national citizenship institutions became a reality when citizenship was made an explicit element of European integration. The emphasis on the political element of rights, as well as the right of petition, further signified that the dimension of participation was increasingly at the center of citizenship discourse. It was seemingly not conceivable to institutionalize the concept of citizenship within European integration without a broader participatory element. The understanding of participation as related to work—which had been increasingly less important to locating significant individuals within European integration—was not included in the direct provisions on citizenship in the Maastricht Treaty. Political participation, personal security, and private interests took its place. To be sure, the worker traversing the national borders of Europe was still the main individual actor “on the ground” of European integration. The major change was that this was not the sole basis for her status as an individual within that system. Other elements gained momentum as citizenship became a more pronounced and in the end explicit category of European integration. With citizenship finally “out in the open,” there was no revolution, then, in European citizenship politics. Some commentators have argued that Union citizenship did not amount to much, if anything, as the status basically built on previously settled rights and added new rights of meager importance to conceiving citizenship. It has, for instance, been deemed as trivial (Weiler 1999: 332) and a misnomer (d’Oliveira 1995: 84). So, was the turn toward explicit citizenship largely a symbolic act without real effects on the status of individuals within European integration? If this was not the case, in what ways did, to cite Shore’s (2000: 74) words, “the idea become a reality”? The short answer is that the reality was already there, it only took the right opportunity to get it “out of the closet.” While perhaps “trivial” in the eyes of scholars, citizenship in the EU turns out to have been
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significant (if not always “positive”) for political institutions, member states, and, indeed, individual citizens themselves. This “hidden” quality of citizenship in early European integration was partly due to its entrenched character with some of the main aims of integration in the first place: free movement and market integration. Rights and early conceptions of citizenship were, in this sense, cogs in the institutional wheel of European integration. As such, Union citizenship is a strong case of institutional lock-in where initial decisions and political principles shape subsequent developments. This is most clearly visible in that the nationality principle was not only consolidated, but also strengthened with the Maastricht Treaty. This strengthening of the secondary nature of individual membership was not only linked to the very institutionalization of citizenship, but also to the pronouncement of the relation between the EU and national levels in decisions on membership. Previous chapters have shown that the nationality principle was increasingly cemented as the basis on which European citizenship was granted to individuals. In the founding treaties, the focus was not primarily on nationality as such, but more on the particular status of (potential) worker or consumer. In the final pieces of legislation on residence prior to the Maastricht Treaty, the access to rights was grounded primarily on nationality. But, these “versions” of the nationality principle did not say anything explicit about the eventual role of European institutions in decisions on who could gain access to membership in any member state and subsequently, rights attached to a citizenship status on the European level. Of course, the prevailing practice of international law has been to grant this right exclusively to each sovereign state.33 Yet, as the EU has developed into a multilevel political system with direct political and legal effects on the nation-states one cannot a priori preempt the possibility of infringements on this domain of sovereignty. However, empirical research shows that this potential of direct Europeanization has not been fulfilled (see Checkel 2001; Vink 2001). In the annexed declaration on nationality in the treaty, it was clearly stated that for all purposes, the issue of individual membership was to be settled solely at the national level. Not only that, despite the declaration that the EU had reached the stage of integration that required the establishment of citizenship for member state nationals, there was no clear notion of what held these citizens together apart from the rights emanating from the treaty and their newly institutionalized citizenship status. In the same vein as the Copenhagen Declaration of 20 years earlier, identity was an issue of high
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politics; it was used to signify the relationship of the EU with third parties and in international relations more generally.34 As duties and their relation to the political life of the community were addressed in the process, one could perhaps have expected increased attention to identity issues. To the extent that issues of identity entered the Maastricht Process it was through the assertion of the Union as an entity both unified and diverse. It was seen as consisting of a common core constructed on already established political communities. The EU as an entity based on “unity in diversity” and an “ever closer union among peoples” was not constituted through, as it were, a prepolitical identity based on common ethnicity, culture, or language. The specific community that citizenship was linked to was rather based on certain common values and interests that were perceived to cross-cut the typical “signifiers” of national identities and citizenship institutions. In the sense that identity figured as a part of the Maastricht Process and the discussions on Union citizenship it was as an effect of the immediate historical backdrop of the IGC on Political Union and the perception of citizenship as linked to the welfare and interests of the individual citizen as well as being a means for the enhancement of democratic legitimacy. Identity issues, therefore, were rather a precursor to, than an important element of, the conception of citizenship that emerged through the negotiations of the IGC and ended in the institutionalization of Union citizenship in the Maastricht Treaty.
Conclusion The Maastricht Process engaged with questions of the utmost importance for the life of a political community. After an interinstitutional dialogue that brought in different viewpoints and proposals, the member states decided, finally, to insert a substantive conception of citizenship into the political, legal, and institutional framework of European integration. Indeed, this conception of citizenship did not differ substantially from those that had, until then, emerged in policy discourses or efforts like the Spinelli Project. Rather, it built on these conceptions, while adding some novel aspects that expanded the status of individuals within European integration. Yet, by refraining from the emulation of the nation-state template through, say, an “official” notion of the identity which underpins the citizenship that draws individuals into the community, European institutions and the member states debated and finally
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created a peculiar and dynamic form of citizenship dependent, more on the potential transnational acts of citizens, than their belonging to and identification with a specified community. Notwithstanding, though, the lack of support for a strong supranational component in the decision on “who the Europeans are,” the very fact that it was brought into the debates shows that the concept of citizenship was related to one of the hallmarks of constitution-making: the demarcation of the citizenry belonging to the polity in question (Grimm 1995: 286). Prior to this, such awareness with regard to the relation between a European polity and “its” citizens had not been visible. Political elements were strengthened, albeit in a transnational sense more than a uniquely supranational way. This is most visible in the continued preemption of the national level with regard to the political rights of European citizenship. The political communities of the member states opened up on the local (and European) level while politics on the national level remained closed also to European citizens. Moreover, notwithstanding the efforts by the EP and the first Spanish proposal on citizenship to forge a Union competence on decisions regarding inclusion and exclusion, citizenship continued to be based on nationality in one of the member states. The Maastricht Process thus, again, consolidated a principle that had been prevalent throughout the integration process. In this sense the effort of establishing a new Treaty framework for a political union did not create a radically new approach to the status of individuals within such a political construction. This chapter has highlighted, then, the continuing struggles in European integration between radical ideas, proposals for change, and path dependency of initial decisions and existing institutions. Clearly, the appropriation of the concept of citizenship for the purposes of furthering European unification and the construction of “an ever closer union” was revolutionary in the sense that this has, traditionally, for all intents and purposes been understood as wedded to the nation-state. Not only that, in the negotiations on the Maastricht Treaty, there were even vibrant ideas floated about an independent role for the EU in decisions on inclusion and exclusion of citizens. As we have seen, these ideas did, in the end, not come to fruition. While the member states clearly acknowledged the fluidity of their borders as a consequence of deeper integration and the strengthening of the principle of free movement in the “market revival” of the 1980s, they were not ready to cede their status as ultimate arbiters over national—and in consequence European— rights and citizenship.
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The counterfactual importance of such ideas should, however, not be underestimated. While European integration has been marked by constant “battles” over intergovernmental and federal solutions to institution-building, there has seldom been much doubt that certain issues would remain under the vestiges of the nation-states. Citizenship would clearly be one of them. This is why the Maastricht Process is so important for our understanding of the meaning of citizenship in the EU. If the vision of postnational citizenship had won through, there would have been a veritable revolution, not only in our understanding of citizenship, but also in how states organize their relations to individual citizens. Hence, there was clearly more of a potential “drama” going on in the otherwise sanguine proposals and ideas that especially the Spaniards and the EP promoted. Modern politics is premised on the so-called Westphalian structuring of a system of states where the sovereignty of states—internally and externally—is the stabilizing factor. This includes complete territorial control over the political community. Taking citizenship out of this equation would mean a significant transformation of modern politics in terms of community, identity, and economics. Theoretically, then, this was explosive stuff. The debates of the Maastricht IGC did, however, not “catch fire.” Taking place amidst renewed “post-Wall” optimism this is perhaps not so surprising. Still, it is highly interesting that some member states saw eye to eye with the EP and (to some extent) the Commission on this issue. As we have seen, in the end citizenship fell into “place,” so to say, and continued already existing conceptions regarding the relationship between member state nationals, European rights, and EU institutions. Yet, something was lurking under the surface. In the next chapter, I will show how—as the closed “forum” of Treaty change politics encountered the “reality” of national identities and ratification problems—the discourse on what European citizenship would entail for the future of the European project was again an open question. The reactions that were previously either nonexistent, muted, or perhaps kept within the walls of secretive negotiation rooms became public and would seriously question the legitimacy and utility of advancing citizenship “beyond the nation-state.”
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Chapter 6
The Years In-Between: From Maastricht to Constitutional Projects
After the introduction of citizenship in the political vocabulary of European unification in the 1970s, consolidation of basic principles such as free movement and nationality in the 1980s, and the “high point” of institutionalization of European citizenship in the Maastricht Treaty, what could come next? This chapter charts the politics of citizenship between the tensions of post-Maastricht reactions to the beginnings of the “constitution-making” period of European integration, initiated with the Charter of Fundamental Rights. In keeping with a common thread of this book, the chapter demonstrates that radical ideas and projects were “unsustainable” when confronted by the reality of already existing notions of citizenship as well as domestic political traditions. Making it “public” that the treaties confer certain rights on member state citizens and thereby create a European citizenry would, therefore, not prove to be an end point of protracted discourses on citizenship in Europe. Contrary to the expectations of European leaders, the watershed of the Maastricht Treaty reactivated long-standing debates and animosities in European politics between, roughly speaking, “statists” and “federalists.” Citizenship outside the nation-state frame became, both for supporters and opponents of deepened integration, a symbol of the new age of European governance and democracy. The citizenship issue would drive another wedge between the two main views on how far European integration should develop. The transformative potential of European citizenship was not “settled” with the Maastricht Treaty. This chapter starts out with the immediate reactions on the Maastricht Treaty and European citizenship triggered to a large part by the rejection of the Treaty in the now famous Danish referendum. What transpired from the post-Maastricht struggle over European citizenship politics was in the end, however, neither “revolutionary” nor “reactionary.” On the contrary, this chapter underscores
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how the basic tenets of 40 years of citizenship practice would be at the core of an interpretive struggle between pro-integrationists and Euroskeptics. Theoretically and philosophically the question was to what extent European citizenship was to be seen as a new type of citizenship that severed its ties with nationality. And in practical politics, the issue was the degree to which European citizenship would diminish the importance of long-standing national citizenship institutions and ingrained identity orientations in the national framing of modern political organization. The main argument of this chapter is that these questions were dealt with by European institutions by claiming a kind of middle ground. The transnationalism of already existing EU rights was maintained and accepted, while postnational ideas were again given a “blow”: the famous “additionality” of European citizenship was bolstered as an answer to Euroskeptics and the reticent Danes. This “solution” to the problems after ratification failure in 1993 was, furthermore, not challenged by subsequent “silent” developments in ECJ rulings and the more visible Charter of Fundamental Rights. The negative and reactionary attitude to European citizenship would indeed end in widespread support for the long-standing, partly nonpolitical status of transnational citizenship. Fundamental or not, European citizenship was more or less frozen in a particular frame; developments and changes would not depart radically from this template.
Post-Maastricht Politics: The “Meaning” of European Citizenship The Maastricht Treaty was signed by the heads of the member states on February 7, 1992. Would this become another big date of European integration reminiscent of, say, the signing of the Treaty of Rome on March 25 or Europe Day on May 9? The last two decades have given a resounding “no” to that question. In the immediate aftermath of the signing, it was the issues of EMU, as well as the aim of a common foreign policy that received widespread attention (Dinan 2004: ch. 7). Commentary on European citizenship was initially less frequent and mostly related to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society actors seeking influence in the EU’s “network governance” (see Warleigh 2000). But this would soon change. The dynamic character of EU politics would again show its face, by “domesticating” the issue of what general impact the new Treaty would potentially have and its collision with symbols and institutions of the nation-state, such as citizenship and identity. While
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the EU/domestic linkage had been relatively modest and indirect in the policy and legal discourses over citizenship in the first 40 odd years of European, this would be at the core of post-Maastricht developments. Establishing a European Union with an explicit citizenship was controversial in political terms. In Denmark, for instance, it was cited as one of the main reasons for the widespread skepticism of the Union and the Treaty’s subsequent failure in ratification, and it was later included as one of Denmark’s four exceptions to the Treaty. While one should make too much of a narrow referendum vote,1 the Danish “no” (as well as the petit oui in France) would, nevertheless, have a strong impact on the integration discourse in terms of bringing the notion of the democratic deficit to the surface. This democratic “turn” in political and scholarly debates on European integration also linked up with citizenship discourse. Indeed, the built-in tensions of the “in-between” character of European citizenship that this book has consistently highlighted came to the surface of political and public debates in the period after the Maastricht celebrations had faded. According to Kostakopoulou (2001: 67), Union citizenship was seen as a potentially “dangerous supplement,” not only in Denmark, but also among national elites and populations: “If European citizenship impacts upon traditional conceptions of citizenship and community, then arguably national fears that it may lead to a parallel Euro-nationality and/or question the very foundations of national citizenship are not misguided.” This interpretation is somewhat surprising if we take into account the conclusions of the previous chapter on citizenship in the Maastricht IGC. Citizenship had been consolidated in a legal sense in terms of rights and membership in the Maastricht Treaty. Its transnational clout was advanced by linking the concept of citizenship with already existing rights of free movement and political participation in other member states. In short: Union citizenship did, in fact, not add much more to an already existing and functioning citizenship acquis in European integration. Citizenship is, however, not only a “dry” legal construct. It is both a variable in and an object of public debate over political communities, boundaries, and identity. In this sense, citizenship is constantly programmed as a part of a political community’s “self-understanding.” The institutionalization and revelation of the fact of citizenship outside the paradigmatic national frame would, therefore, be pitted against the “strong evaluations” of state membership that form the core of national citizenship institutions. What was at stake was simply (yet importantly for domestic
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actors) the very conceptualization of citizenship in an increasingly deepened European Union. It is, therefore, not surprising that the issue of membership and its dependence on nationality would be of special importance in the postMaastricht elaborations on European citizenship. Already in the so-called Birmingham Declaration issued by the European Council,2 the EU sought to resolve the problems caused by popular resistance to the Maastricht Treaty and its perceived threat to European nation-states. First, the declaration reiterated the “unity in diversity” slogan of the EU by claiming the need to “respect the history, culture and traditions of individual nations.” Secondly, it sought to “make clear that citizenship of the Union brings our citizens additional rights and protection without in any way taking the place of their national citizenship.” These declarations on the part of European leaders did not so much ask “who are members?” in terms of access to rights, but rather sought to clarify the relation between national citizenship institutions and the European status. The question of “who decides and why?” was left with only one answer in the immediate post-Maastricht developments of declaratory statements and treaty amendments: the single nation-state. Thus, the additionality of European citizenship was upheld as its defining feature seen in relation to national citizenship institutions and the member states. Individual membership was wholly dependent on prior national citizenship and the EU was understood not to have any say in the determination of who possesses nationality in the member states and hence also European citizenship. The subsequent European Council in Edinburgh,3 reaffirmed this view in its so-called Edinburgh Decision.4 In fact, it was expressly stated that the EU had taken note of the unilateral declarations of Denmark5 regarding several aspects of the Treaty, among them Union citizenship. This was, according to the Danish position “a political and legal concept which is entirely different from the concept of citizenship within the meaning of the Constitution of . . . Denmark.” What is interesting here is not the Danish position in itself, but rather that this was taken at face value by the other member states and EU institutions. At this critical juncture of comprehending what Union citizenship could potentially mean for the European polity, a “European” conception was not raised as an alternative to the historically entrenched conceptual understanding of citizenship as tied to the nation-state. In a sense, the often professed “dynamism” of European citizenship was partly forestalled by the vigorous assertion of its derivative character vis-à-vis national citizenship
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institutions. Conceptions that could change the conceptual path, for instance, in a postnational direction with weaker links between the access to European rights and national citizenship, were less achievable with these developments. One can only speculate on the reason for why member states and EU institutions alike chose this path. Of course, it is highly likely that it was mainly linked to the aim of salvaging the ratification process. Yet, the premise of the Danish position of European citizenship being entirely different from national citizenship resonated with the increasing emphasis on the secondary nature of such a status on the European level.
Amsterdam Treaty: The Circle Was Complete The first sign that the Maastricht Treaty had not become the end point of Treaty change in European integration came with the Amsterdam Treaty. While not convened to deal with citizenship only, the negotiations at the Amsterdam IGC also addressed the loose ends—in a Treaty sense—of European citizenship after the Maastricht debacle. What were these loose ends? In essence, the question was how binding the declarations of the European Council on the benign character of European citizenship in relation to national citizenship would be. Were these only concessions to the Danish government to facilitate their famous opt-out on European citizenship and to pave the way for ratification of the Maastricht Treaty? Or did they rather touch upon more fundamental issues of membership, belonging, and identity in the multifarious terrain of citizenship politics in Europe? Clearly, the last question resonated more with the member states in the Amsterdam IGC. “Maastricht citizenship” had opened up a Pandora’s box of multiple citizenship and complex identity construction in the supranational Union. This needed settlement, at least in political and legal terms. Theoretically, a partly unsettled notion of membership—the norms and rules by which citizenship is granted—is a precarious state of affairs for any rights-granting political community. This could, then, have incited intense debate on settling the meaning of European citizenship once and for all. Indeed, there were some attempts by member states to foster debate on citizenship, several of which pointed in a supranational direction in institutional terms and a postnational direction in terms of rights. On the institutional side, for instance, Italy proposed to grant the Commission sole right of initiative in policies of immigration
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and border controls and France suggested in an early stage to introduce majority voting in the area of free movement (see Maas 2007: 68–9). On the topic of rights, their origins, and extension on the European level, Finland argued for extending EU citizenship rights in the social field, as well as for the creation of a European Rights Charter.6 But the story of European citizenship continued on the same track as before. Radical proposals for supranationalizing and postnationalizing citizenship in the EU did not prevail in the IGC debates. What the member states simply did was to uphold and finally include the so-called additionality of citizenship in the Treaty: “Citizenship of the Union shall complement and not replace national citizenship” (Article 17).7 Besides this addendum to the direct treaty provisions on citizenship, the Treaty of Amsterdam did not add much to the already existing framework from the Maastricht Treaty, except for adjusting (Article 18(2)—ex 8a) by involving the codecision procedure in possible facilitations regarding the exercise of rights and a right of citizens to write to European institutions and receive answers in one of the official languages of the EU (Article 21—ex 8d). The declarations of the preamble stayed more or less the same, without any substantial changes, say, to the notion of European identity that remained externalized and on the level of high politics. The “circle” of post-Maastricht debates on citizenship was, then, completed. These debates started out with a modest and evidently transnational conception of citizenship that eschewed radical postnational inroads to national sovereignty on membership and belonging. Yet, this citizenship became a fervent symbol of supranationalism and the potential of a federal Europe, and thus the focal point of debate over its meaning in the remit of European integration. This debate veered somewhat from the “stable” course of transnational citizenship, especially in a new set of postnational ideas that surfaced in the opening stage of the Amsterdam IGC. Nevertheless, the member states as “masters of the treaties” basically went back to start in terms of citizenship politics in the Amsterdam Treaty. They indeed once and for all settled, at least in a Treaty sense, the national grounding of European citizenship. But not only the member states and other political actors debated European citizenship in the years after Maastricht. The ECJ took upon itself to explicitly interpret the meaning of citizenship in supranational integration. Initially, these legal interpretations were basically in line with transnational citizenship. In the next section we will see, however, that there were certain legal developments that could point to an increased
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awareness of fundamental human rights as an additional building block of European citizenship.
Nationality, Rights, and the “Internal” Character of Citizenship In the period immediately before and in the aftermath of the Maastricht Treaty, the ECJ explicitly took on board the question of the meaning and scope of European citizenship (see Carrera 2005: 710; Kostakopoulou 2005: 233).8 In its first seminal case in this period, the ECJ brought up issues both of nationality and the scope of rights following from Union citizenship. This case was Micheletti9 where the ECJ restated the principle of individual membership as an internal nation-state issue. But, this did not mean that they had full discretion in deciding when noncitizens were to be granted rights (see e.g. De Groot 1998). The ECJ ruled that for purposes of granting rights based on Union citizenship, a member state could not invoke the citizenship of a nonmember country for persons also holding a member state citizenship through dual nationality. In such cases, the status of Union citizenship and general principles of Community law10 should trump member states’ competence in decisions on acquisition and loss of nationality. This privileged character of European citizenship in terms of access to rights was strengthened in the Boukhalfa11 case where the ECJ ruled that the scope of rights can exceed the territorial boundaries of the EU. According to the Court, Union citizens working for an official body of a second country within the borders of a third country cannot automatically be deprived of the rights that follow from their European status. This signifies that through the principle of nondiscrimination based on nationality, a kind of equalization of European citizens fell under the ambit of EU law. Their rights were to be seen as fundamental, not only in a territorial sense, but also in a personal sense. Still, this ruling did not prevent the ECJ from invoking the territorial character of Union citizenship in its adjudication on the link between free movement and the access to rights. In Uecker/Jacquet,12 Martinez Sala,13 and Avello,14 the ECJ strengthened free movement as the core of a European rights status. In these cases it simply stated that rights linked to Union citizenship were to have an effect for individuals only after having exercised the primary right of free movement across national borders (see Castro Oliveira 2002; Mather 2005; Nic Shuibhne 2002).
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The ruling of Uecker/Jacquet, for instance, argued that “citizenship of the Union . . . is not intended to extend the scope ratione materiae of the Treaty also to internal situations which have no link with Community law.”15 Shaw (1997: 557) argues that through such reasoning, a narrow and formal concept of citizenship as membership has been strengthened. Citizenship “beyond the nation-state” was perceived as truly outside in terms of how it could provide rights for individual citizens. The extension of rights—and not only the issue of who are members when—was also at stake in Martinez Sala. Here, the ECJ moved in the direction of elevating the rights of European citizens on a par with those of host state citizens by strengthening the prohibition on discrimination based on nationality.16 This case also signified a shift toward a more general right to free movement as it ruled that benefits previously accorded to workers could be granted to a person other than a worker (Castro Oliveira 2002: 80). This was done by ruling that European citizens could not be expected to adhere to additional measures to those of “incumbent” nationals when applying for benefits they are entitled to through their rights of residence following from the provisions of Union citizenship as well as EU law more generally. In principle, the ECJ never ruled against the nationality prerogative in decisions on individual membership in this period (Mather 2005: 741). Yet, as shown above, in the Micheletti and Boukhalfa cases there were some tendencies toward asserting the primacy of individual rights over nationality especially in cases where individuals enjoy dual citizenship. This was also the case in Avello where the ECJ ruled that European citizenship and its rights can be invoked by citizens who have dual nationality, even when the state toward which the rights claim was directed prohibits dual nationality or prioritizes one citizenship status over another. This was further linked to a rather sweeping assertion of Union citizenship as “destined to be the fundamental status of nationals of Member States who find themselves in the same situation to enjoy . . . the same treatment in law irrespective of their nationality.”17 By giving precedence to individual rights and the principle of nondiscrimination, a certain development toward supranational competence in deciding “who are members?” in the European polity can be detected. This competence is, however, indirect through the acknowledgment of dual nationality as effective for enjoying rights that follow from European citizenship, rather than a direct assertion of how nation-states are to include and exclude citizens from enjoying membership within their sphere of responsibility.
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In Collins18—one of its latest rulings in the citizenship field in this period—the ECJ, notwithstanding the propensity to assert individual rights as fundamental and in terms of personhood, argued that the concept of the worker is still significant for attaining European citizenship and ensuing rights. Thus, the very core of the embryonic conception of citizenship in the ECSC Treaty—that of the (potentially) participating worker—is still activated in a transformed European polity with an explicit, institutionalized, and Treaty-based citizenship status to its name. To summarize, the cases dealt with here demonstrate that, notwithstanding some moves toward a more person-oriented rights status, the ECJ upheld basic tenets such as the nationality principle and border-crossing that were visible in conceptions of European citizenship prior to Union citizenship. Nic Shuibhne (2002: 732) argues that this has created a status where the transnational is taken too literally and reverse discrimination abounds. In light of previous findings in this chapter this only serves to highlight the continued relevance of national membership in a legal sense, also under the remit of citizenship “beyond the nation-state.” In addition to the case law of the ECJ, a major overhaul of secondary legislation on free movement contributed to the politics of citizenship and individual rights in European integration. With the so-called Citizenship Directive,19 the Council and the EP sought to amend and consolidate the existing sector-by-sector and piecemeal approach to free movement rights evident in the analysis of the last pieces of legislation that were passed on these issues prior to the institutionalization of Union citizenship. In contrast to previous legislative acts, this directive linked the issues of free movement and residence rights directly to Union citizenship as a fundamental status. The directive also underlined that such rights should be strengthened not only for the typical focal points of European integration such as workers or self-employed persons, but for all Union citizens. And, it established a right of permanent residence for Union citizens with a view to “strengthen the feeling of Union citizenship.”20 In addition, the scope of rights was not limited only to Union citizens; non-EU citizens such as family members are rendered such rights under certain circumstances. The rationale behind this inclusive measure was linked by the “preamble” of the directive to the values of “freedom and dignity.” These provisions and aims cannot, however, be seen as conducive to a rights development where the EU pools the sovereignty of the member states in issues of territorial residence and movement across national borders. The reason for this is that the qualifying and potentially restricting measures such as socio-economic conditions
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or issues of public policy, public security or public health on the part of the member states were retained in the directive. In terms of addressing citizenship, both ECJ jurisprudence and the consolidating directive on free movement and residence rights contributed to European citizenship discourse, through concretizations regarding the state of citizenship and rights post-Maastricht. What is most striking about these efforts of clarification is that they focused almost solely on rights and to some extent membership as elements of citizenship. Identity and participation figured to no or very small degrees; the latter mainly in terms of discussions on the relation between work/nonwork and the right to have rights, rather than as the nucleus of a European rights status. In principle, ECJ jurisprudence restated the nationality prerogative with regard to decisions on “who are members” for the purposes of enjoying European citizenship and its rights. Still, there were elements of the case law after Maastricht that spoke to some modest and indirect developments in favor of personhood as opposed to nationhood in European citizenship politics. This was most clearly visible in the cases where the Court held that in situations of dual nationality, the member states did not have exclusive discretion in decisions on which citizenship of the person in question to take into account. Here, the Court granted the individual rights-holder autonomy in invoking the status of her choice. This was clearly not a case of impacting directly on the power of member states to decide who their citizens are/should be. Nevertheless, it shows on closer account that the creation of a European citizenship status with rights in second countries through a privileged denizenship has shifted some of the power to decide on rights issues to both the European and individual levels. In terms of the types of rights that were emphasized after Maastricht, free movement and to some extent residence were at the core of the conception of citizenship. This was visible within several of the judgments from the ECJ, often upholding free movement as the very basis for invoking European citizenship. The transnationalism of European citizenship thus became more pronounced through ECJ case law. In addition, the directive on free movement and residence conceived of such a transnational status as fundamental for citizens that make use of the principle of movement across the internal borders of the EU. In fact, the importance of citizenship for the individuals in question was deemed to be of such a character that noncitizen family members should be granted such rights without strict requirements on their part.
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Further, it was seen as fundamental not only for individuals as such, but also for the “feeling” of Union citizenship. Thus, the fundamental rights status was seen as a possible vehicle for belonging between European citizens and identification with the status they attain from the European polity. Still, this thin and implicit identity marker was clearly “built” on the priority of rights, rather than antecedent notions of identity or belonging.
The Charter of Fundamental Rights: Not So “Fundamental” After All? In charting the political and legal developments on citizenship after the Maastricht Treaty, this chapter has highlighted that individual rights have been at the apex of debate over the relationship between individual citizens and European institutions. Indeed, the theme of rights has been central—implicitly or explicitly—to the broader European integration project. The political and legal status of rights have, however, been contested in the supranational European context. Some have argued that while the EU clearly bestows certain rights on member state citizens, these are strictly confined within the remit and limits of concrete Treaty provisions (see e.g. Grimm 1995). In other words, “European” rights are restricted by the political, constitutional, and legal limits of the Treaty. Others have argued contrary to this limited view that rights are central to the self-understanding and identity of European institutions (see e.g. Eriksen 2009). In previous chapters, I have highlighted how rights politics have played a role in shaping the norms of membership for individual citizens outside the nation-state. Certain rights have been and remain at the core of basic principles for EU politics and institutions, and for the construction of European citizenship. Rights became a main focus of European politics at the end of the 1990s. The European Council in Cologne21 decided that the EU should draft a Charter of Fundamental Rights through a special body, a Convention. The upshot of the reasoning over legitimacy issues and rights was to set this Convention up as a deliberative body of national and European parliamentarians. It was, moreover, construed to receive and debate over proposals from civil society actors and NGOs. The Charter was the last major development of European integration with regard to citizenship prior to the Convention on the Future of Europe. The basic aim of the Charter according to the heads of states was
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to enumerate rights already protected by ECJ jurisprudence and other national and international documents, such as the constitutional traditions of the member states and the ECHR.22 This would in the opinion of European leaders not only make such rights “visible” to European citizens, but also lend general legitimacy to the EU polity (Schönlau 2005: 3). The kernel of citizenship as it has been argued in this book is norms of membership, concrete rights, and different modes of identity. These issues would, according to a comprehensive analysis be at the center of attention of the Charter Convention (Schönlau 2005). Based on interviews with Convention members, Schönlau (2005: 93) highlights that there was a strong belief among them in the development and strengthening of European citizenship as a result of the Charter. European citizenship has often been understood by leading politicians, EU parliamentarians, and European intellectuals to be a harbinger for creating a salient and credible European identity. But, what did the Charter Convention actually bring to the surface in terms of debates on rights and citizenship in the EU? True to the story of this book, the Charter Convention was ripe with more or less radical proposals on the content and meaning of different types of fundamental or human rights. In addressing the question of membership—of who were to be granted which rights—the debates of the Charter Convention took on the typical mantle of whether European rights ought to be distinguished between European citizens qua member state nationals or third-country nationals. As the EU on the one hand held out a promise of “denationalizing” citizenship in terms of giving rights based on a nonstate political organization, but on the other hand strengthened the nationality principle in the Amsterdam Treaty, this would necessarily be a vexing issue for a political body debating the “soul” of European political community. Accordingly, there were several calls among Convention members to tone down the nationality dependence in the access to rights. So, whose rights? In the debates there were, for instance, calls to include third-country nationals in certain types of rights by refraining from giving them exclusively to European citizens, but rather to those “residing” in a member state (Schönlau 2005: 94–5). This book has highlighted the prevalence of rights-based identity in European integration. Yet, the Charter Convention was seen by some of its members and certain civil society actors as a possibility to raise the issue of a more pronounced and “substantial” value basis for European citizenship and identity (Schönlau 2005: 98–107). In so doing, the Convention first agreed to construct a preamble that would set out the
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general characteristics of fundamental rights and the EU. It was settled, then, relatively early in the process that the EU is a community of values that go beyond the impulse of market integration. There was early agreement that certain common values exist in Europe, such as human dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity, democracy, and the rule of law. However uncontroversial it would be to reach agreement on which values to focus on, controversy would surface over the origins of them. Were these values based on specific cultural traits of European history or rather more universal in nature? The Convention would address this question in the drafting stage by focusing especially on the link between religion, identity, and rights. An attempt to draw a general value basis for rights and citizenship from the Union’s “cultural, humanist and religious heritage” in one of the later drafts of the preamble23 sparked considerable debate. The religious aspect was especially problematic. In the end, the solution was to “go abstract” in the sense that the Charter Convention highlighted “spiritual and moral heritage”24 rather than Christianity or the Judeo-Christian tradition. A sizeable literature emerged in the aftermath of the Charter, often focusing on its import for European integration writ large.25 In terms of citizenship, the Charter did not add much, however, when assessed against the developments that have been traced previously in this book. Its most vigorous claim figured already in the preamble where it was stated that the individual is at the center of the EU’s activities through the establishment of citizenship. In addition, the typical elements of previous policies and treaties such as free movement and the foundation of the EU on universal values were declared in the preamble. The assertion of the place of the individual within the integration project was in fact unprecedented. Still, the substantial rights provisions of the Charter did not build on such a novel assertion in expanding significantly on the already established catalog of rights evident from 50 odd years of integration and citizenship discourse. In fact, many of the provisions were not linked to a notion of citizenship in the first place. These were what one can call typical “bill of rights” provisions such as civil rights in terms of personal freedoms and liberties as well as protective rights within criminal proceedings.26 In chapter III on “Equality,” a general prohibition on an array of subjects was stated. Further, the fundamental principle of EU law of nondiscrimination on the basis of nationality was reiterated,27 however, without adding to previous legislation and jurisprudence. As regards the provisions on “Solidarity,” some articles28 anchored certain social issues regarding
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families, professional life, social security, and health care to a notion of the fundamental rights status of individuals (see e.g. Menéndez 2002). Lastly, in the articles connected to an explicit notion of European citizenship, the rights stipulated did not add much, except for a right to good administration, to previously asserted citizenship rights.29 The Charter clearly consolidated already existing facets of European citizenship—explicitly in terms of rights—as these have developed over time through different practices of the EU system. There were no radical alterations concerning notions of membership, identity, or participation. The symbolic value and political import can, however, not be dismissed at face value. As a corollary to this, a few words can be said regarding some aspects concerning our understanding of what citizenship has grown to mean within European integration—which in this chapter has been done through appraising debates on its meaning after the watershed of the Maastricht Treaty. From the vantage point of citizenship discourse, the declaration of individuals as being at the heart of the EU’s activities is interesting. Through this declaration, the EU clearly acknowledged that the individual citizen is part and parcel of its development and self-understanding as a polity. This is a far cry from the almost exclusive “high politics” orientation of the founding treaties. In these, the individual hardly figured at all, and when he/she did it was in the very specific role as a potentially participating worker. So, through this assertion alone, the Charter serves as a compelling representation of the trajectory of conceptions within treaties and ensuing policy practices: from virtually nothing—a mere embryo limited in scope—to being at the forefront of EU integration in terms of its catalog of rights and the rationale for its existence.
Conclusion The last decade of the twentieth century was an active one in terms of citizenship politics in the EU. With citizenship at long last “out in the open” public, political, and constitutional debates on the meaning of European citizenship followed in its slipstream. The political understanding and legal implementation of citizenship would, however, not completely “overtake” previous conceptions of a market citizenship constructed mainly on the principles of nationality and free movement. Indeed, this chapter has charted how the institutionalization of an explicit citizenship status “beyond the nation-state” did not bolster new and radical ideas of European citizenship opposed to previous
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conceptions and developments. The aftershock of popular rejection in Denmark and near failure in France spurred a debate where consolidation and clarification of citizenship would be at the forefront. The consolidating traits of the period after the Maastricht Treaty were first and foremost visible in the indisputable link between membership as part of a European citizenship status with the nationality principle. As previous chapters have shown, membership had increasingly been linked in explicit terms to prior member state citizenship. By bringing the idea of a European citizenship into reality also in institutional terms, the definitional issue of “what kind” of citizenship this was became even more relevant for political leaders and member state publics. This was in fact necessary, as the Danish debate on the new reality of a Union focused among other things on the possible intrusion of European citizenship on Denmark’s constitutional sovereignty. But in the end, this “dangerous supplement” became perhaps a “mere” supplement by inserting the national character of membership into the Amsterdam Treaty. The rights that follow from this secondary citizenship thus came even more clearly to the fore in conceptions of European citizenship than had previously been the case. Free movement and (to a lesser extent) residence retained the position as the core rights granted to European citizens. Yet, it seems clear that the scope of these rights was more settled within this period than before. Especially, ECJ jurisprudence underlined that European citizenship is inherently transnational. The rights following from the status are in fact activated first when citizens make use of the fundamental right of moving across the internal—and national— borders of the EU: no movement, no rights. This state of affairs was all the more apparent with regard to political citizenship. Political rights in European elections were in the Maastricht Treaty geared toward facilitating participation for resident noncitizens. But which noncitizens? Not all, not so-called third-country nationals: the EU chose to further privilege the transnationals of European integration, that is, those holding Union citizenship and exercising their right to free movement. Thus, by reinforcing the national quality of European citizenship in the postMaastricht period, the member states underlined their ultimate control of systemic features regarding political participation, while the European level was consolidated as a facilitator for citizens moving across the borders of these political systems. Identity was still not an explicit theme of European citizenship discourse, in terms of answering the basic questions of “who we are?” and “what kind of community is citizenship linked to?” for the European
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level. Such identity issues were very much preempted by the vigorous emphasis on the member states as the sole site for citizenship politics in terms of decisions on membership and thus ultimately on who belongs and why. In this light, postnational prospects for European citizenship looked dim indeed. The member states had intervened and “protected”—to the extent that it was possible—citizenship as one of the remaining hallmarks of sovereign nation-states. The Danish position portraying European citizenship as a politico-legal concept without import for its national understanding of citizenship was affirmed by the other member states and the very Treaty framework of the EU. Rights were settled as the core of the conception of citizenship following this admission—and could easily develop as such without further practical considerations of its import for the EU as a polity in the making. Yet, as nationality was upheld through the efforts of member states, ECJ jurisprudence did indeed push European citizenship toward a conception that—in exceptional circumstances—also hinges on fundamental rights of persons, and not only nationals. The post-Maastricht decade ended with the novel institutional construction (on the European level) of a Charter Convention. Set up to forge a “bill of rights” relevant for the EU polity and its citizens, this body addressed a plethora of issues related to citizenship. Explicit clauses on citizenship more or less followed the path of existing conceptions. Identity and political community would, however, prove to be harder nuts to crack. After heated debate over the roots of European values and rights, the Charter Convention ended in a compromise that emphasized their proximate universality rather than specific origins in the continent’s Christian heritage. In this context, “unity in diversity” thus meant something more than common history or cultural origins. Was this, then, finally a breakthrough for postnational citizenship in the EU? I argue that it was not. The explicit articles on citizenship remained wedded to the transnational idea of European integration. Moreover, the avoidance of “culturalizing” identity through primordial signifiers or a specific “European” religion can hardly serve as evidence for postnationalization. Rather, the “neutrality” of values and identity spoke to the kernel of citizenship discourse. In the Charter Convention, European citizenship was forged as a vehicle of integration through free movement and political participation, much more than a mode of common belonging in a cultural community.
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Chapter 7
The Convention on the Future of Europe and Its Aftermath
The long “constitutional season” of European integration (Fossum and Menéndez 2011) would reach its peak with the Convention on the Future of Europe (2002–03) (hereafter, the Convention). After several Treaty revision processes and the success of drafting a Charter of Fundamental Rights for European citizens, the hope was that the EU would end its “soul-searching” with the final enactment of a European constitution. The word “constitution” evokes strong images in modern politics. A constitution is the bedrock of organized political communities. It lays down the basic principles, values, boundaries, and institutions of a polity. In short: constitution-making is a process of figuring out a polity’s self-understanding as a bounded and specific community (Grimm 1995: 287–8). As such, the constitution and the making of it are intimately linked to individual rights, identity, and citizenship. This chapter outlines how these issues would be central to the selfprofessed constitution-making effort of the EU that was launched by the Laeken Declaration1 in 2001 and ended in the final Constitutional Treaty passed by the heads of governments in Rome, December 2004. This would, however, not end in success (read: ratification). The constitutional process was derailed after the Dutch and French citizenries voted “no” in their referenda. As a consequence, the chapter ends with a mapping of contending issues, preliminary solutions, and the place of citizenship in the Treaty that was designed to “rescue” at least some remnants of constitutional ideas, that of Lisbon. In the Laeken Declaration, European leaders took the cue from the call by the then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer for a discussion on a federalization of Europe. The purported need for such a clarification of the federal nature of the EU political system was linked to the basic questions of democratic legitimacy and institutional effectiveness after Eastern enlargement. Now, some readers might pause to consider
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this whole chapter futile as the Constitutional Treaty ended on a whimper and in the constitutional rejection of European leaders in the Lisbon Treaty. I disagree. The chapter will show how the Convention is crucial for our understanding of the place of citizenship in the European construction. As a mixed body that included representatives of member state governments, national and European parliamentarians, members of the Commission, as well as representatives of the then candidate countries for accession to the EU, the Convention engaged in wide-reaching debates on issues relating to membership, rights, participation, and identity. Citizenship discourse followed well-trodden paths but also entered more rocky trails. Transnational solutions were chosen, with more radical proposals in postnational and cosmopolitan directions once more losing out in the long run. Moreover, as the chapter charts how citizenship fared after the constitutional malaise, it provides yet another perspective on the solidity of transnational citizenship after more than 60 years of European integration. In analyzing how the diverse Convention addressed, articulated, and debated citizenship, the chapter is organized taking the phase-approach of the Praesidium’s2 organization as a starting point: a “listening” phase, a “deliberating” phase, and a “drafting” phase.3
The “Listening” Phase: Setting the Constitutional Stage The Convention embarked on its work based on a rather open mandate, linked to a list of vague questions, but with the explicit opportunity to establish a draft Treaty (see Magnette 2004: 213). The concept of citizenship was addressed already at the very initiation of the Convention, albeit not directly in terms of a concrete definition of what such a concept would mean within a constitutionalized European polity. Rather, it was linked to the perceived need to bring “the EU closer to its citizens.”4 As such, this first phase of explicit constitutional debate continued a long “tradition” in European politics. Citizenship, rights, and identity have since the Maastricht Treaty routinely been linked to a self-understanding of the EU as deficient in terms of belonging and political participation. This framing of citizenship in a constitutional context would prove to be a vexing issue in the drafting stage when the Convention entered into debates over the value basis of European unification. Concretely, however, in the actual debates in this first phase, citizenship was not closely linked to the “big” constitutional questions. As the Convention prepared the crucial phases of debate over the whole range
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of constitutional issues and the drafting of a concrete document, these “listening” overtures focused for the most part on rights. This is not surprising as rights have been at the core of European citizenship discourse since the founding treaties. Market integration arguably brought with it a certain modality of rights. This first “economic” constitution of European integration also became the starting point for a full-fledged constitution for the European polity. In this context, free movement was lauded as one of the major achievements of European integration.5 Thus, also the Convention upheld free movement in the single market as one of the core principles that create a link between individual citizens and European institutions. While market integration was the starting point, members of the Convention soon addressed the lack of accountability within the EU system, notwithstanding the legitimacy inherent in direct elections to the EP. More concretely related to this issue of democratic legitimacy, many members of the Convention asserted that there was a need for making “Europe’s citizens . . . directly able to choose and remove those at the helm of its affairs.”6 This concrete participatory dimension of citizenship was supplemented by early consensus on core values of the EU such as inter alia, democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.7 Indeed, the import of human rights for the status of individuals on the one hand, and the very existence of European institutions on the other hand was underlined at the subsequent plenary session where many members advocated accession to the ECHR on the part of the EU as such, and not only indirectly through the national level.8 The range of citizenship issues was somewhat widened in the contributions of civil society organizations to the Convention’s proceedings.9 In addition to the obvious concern for a more important role for civil society organizations in the political system of the EU, the diverse contributions revolved around certain broad themes. For instance, there was a widespread plea for the Union to operate more closely to the “recipients” of its policy-making. In addition to this “instrumentalist”10 focus on citizens related to the EU’s operation and functioning, rights and participation were raised as pivotal issues. Regarding rights, this was visible in the appeal for respect for fundamental rights through the incorporation of the Charter, as well as the proposed extension of the rights catalog through provisions on, for instance, gender equality and children’s rights. In addition, there were assertions of the need to provide for a more clear recognition of social rights. As such, these proposals touched upon a widening of the citizenship “palette” of the Convention.
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European citizenship would be pushed in a more pronounced social direction if such rights were enshrined as constitutional principles. The radical potential of this measure is visible if we take into account that such rights are seldom “constitutionalized” in state constitutions. Again, a reformist body in the EU was furnished with relatively radical and farreaching proposals in the initial stages of its proceedings. Finally, in the case of participation, there were widespread calls for the promotion of a greater number of citizens to take part in the political life of the EU through, for instance, a single referendum at the EU level on the issue of the Constitutional Treaty. Not only did civil society actors push the case for social citizenship in the EU, but also the need to create a single Europeanized democratic constituency for the constitution-to-be. At a subsequent plenary session,11 the Convention members debated these issues with representatives of organizations and the European Ombudsman. Several of the issues found widespread support among the members, such as a stronger focus on social rights and participatory democracy. In this debate, the concept of European citizenship was also brought directly in,12 but without a specific definition of its content and relations between dimensions. More concretely, the principle of free movement was highlighted at this early juncture of the Convention’s work. The general focus on rights was not followed up by a further concentration on political rights. Rather, in the “listening” phase the issue of such rights was raised implicitly as a corollary to the advocacy of a greater participatory role for citizens in the policy-making process of the EU, as well as in the election of its political leadership. The emphasis on rights was further observable by the absence of explicit discussion on membership and identity. To the extent that such issues were addressed, it was only as a corollary to an often stated declaratory aim of the EU, that of bringing it closer to its citizens. This notion of belonging between citizens and European institutions was, however, not couched in explicit identity language, but was rather posed as a precursor to the very task that the Convention had been granted by the European Council.
The “Deliberating” Phase: Rights, Dual Citizenship, and Values The second and important “deliberating” phase of the Convention commenced with discussions on the work of several working groups that had dealt with specific areas of importance13 for the redrafting of the Treaty
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framework of European integration. For the most part, these working groups did not deal explicitly with issues linked to citizenship. They were mostly concerned with minute legal details or institutional issues. To the small extent that issues of citizenship were handled, what emerged was mainly a further focus on rights. For instance, fundamental rights were perceived to be a core “building block” of European integration that ought to be central to the EU’s constitutional framework.14 While the working groups did nothing to raise the pulse of civil society actors, rights activists, or citizenship scholars for that matter, the early presentation of a preliminary draft Constitutional Treaty was more interesting.15 This text was to serve as a possible articulation of a Treaty and thus focused on its most important components, such as definition of general objectives for the Union, specific policies, and its institutional setup. Through this distilled version of issues that had also been addressed in the “listening” phase, the issue of citizenship became more pronounced. Again, however, citizenship was dealt with indirectly. The setting in which issues of citizenship also figured was the recognition of the inherent diversity of the Union and the national identities of its constituent units, the member states.16 The commonality that could emerge from this notion of diversity was values, such as fundamental rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Indeed, the protection of common values was deemed to be one of the general objectives of the EU.17 This was further visible in the Convention’s explicit linkage between rights and the declaration of the basic values that one perceived to underpin the integration project and its specific institutions and policies. Through this explicit linkage between rights and the declaration of basic values citizenship— and rights as its main element within the European context—was seen as an integral part of the foundation for a constitutionalized EU. In fact, this aspect was not only linked to rights, but was also highlighted with regard to a notion of belonging that was also discussed in this period. The Convention further focused on a type of political identity, where European citizens were understood to be drawn together in a community that was increasingly seen as a political union, and not only as an internal market. Clearly, then, the Convention framed citizens as linked to the EU, through a primary status built on certain individual rights, which in turn stipulate a notion of community and identity specific to the European polity. In addition, Union citizenship18 was also included in the draft Treaty. The proposed provisions were clearly based on existing conceptions of citizenship, with a focus on its dependence on nationality, as well as
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typical European rights. Nevertheless, the draft Treaty was more “daring” at this stage than European leaders had been at previous intervals of debating and defining the scope of citizenship in the EU. Concretely, it perceived of a European citizenship status as a dual citizenship, with national and European citizenship equally important, and thus a status that would make every citizen “free to use either, as he or she chooses, with the rights and duties attaching to each.”19 These norms of individual membership and access to rights were conceived at this stage as the most radical idea of the Convention thus far. A free-standing status on the European level, coexisting with national citizenship in a dual status where citizens would be free to choose the activated status on a voluntary basis would amount to a solid break with inherited notions of membership and belonging in modern political organization. Dual citizenship is of course a relatively common status in a globalized world with increasing cross-border interactions (Kivisto and Faist 2007: ch. 5). But to conceive of this as an iterative status where the citizen him-/herself can choose to pursue her rights between the two polities is more uncommon. Indeed, it counters the typical dual citizenship situation where one of the citizenships (typically that of primary residence) will “dominate” over the other (Spiro 1997). In this sense, European citizenship was seen as being on a par with the prior national membership, admittedly overturning the inverse federalism of European citizenship that dominated institutional practices from the Maastricht Treaty and Edinburgh Decision forward. Arguably this proposal did not only point strongly in a postnational direction, but also exposed relatively strong cosmopolitan leanings in its emphasis on citizenship as inhabiting a potential for choice on the part of citizens themselves. It would in part mean turning from “we do the choosing” (Walzer 1983) to “I do the choosing” in matters of citizenship, rights, and duties. Not only radical proposals on membership were emphasized. The draft also addressed the so-called “democratic life of the Union” by arguing for a principle of “participatory democracy” as pivotal for the EU.20 The notion of participation which was brought forward focused on the need for openness and access of citizens and their eventual organizations to the decision-making process. Lastly, there was a call for the enactment of a uniform procedure in elections to the EP, which would bring out the Europeanness of political rights more clearly. Interestingly, this restatement of the importance of political participation was an echo of previous instances of implicit or explicit “constitution-making” such as the Spinelli Project and the Maastricht Process. In fact, at this juncture
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of the Convention, citizen’s participation was based on a standard of democracy. Thus, participation was not understood by the Convention at this stage mainly as an effect of previously established political rights. It was also seen as crucial to the state of the institutional system enacted through a Constitutional Treaty. In this sense, rights and participation were dynamically linked to citizens’ belonging to the institutions of European integration. In the debates of the plenary sessions that followed in the wake of these first interventions of the “deliberating phase,” citizenship was brought more forcefully into the constitutional fray. The assertion of individual rights as crucial for a constitutionalized European polity received widespread support among the Convention members.21 In fact, it was held in the debates that the incorporation of the Charter “would follow the logic of the evolution from an economic Community to a political Union of common values.”22 Hence, in the view of the majority of Convention members, rights were seen as an essential element in the very value basis of the EU. Furthermore, and in a broader sense, it was widely held that the preliminary draft Treaty was conducive to forging political identity, and not only a “fleeting” market identity.23 In fact, at this juncture it was also argued that there ought to be a direct link between the concept of citizenship and values, whereby it would be stated that, not only the member states, but also European citizens share the same values. Related to this, some members wanted to include a statement in the preamble that defined the EU not only as a Union of states, but also of citizens.24 In all, then, within the debate on the preliminary draft Treaty, citizenship was addressed as increasingly important for the EU, with a special emphasis on rights and identity. In this deliberating phase a more supranational or “European” idea of citizenship seemed to seep through. Citizenship was not merely couched in the classic transnational terms of free movement and rights in second countries, but also as a self-standing status with an inherent value for citizens themselves and the European project. This purported Europeanization of membership decisions and access to rights was followed by some modest suggestions to pursue an explicit legal basis to facilitate a uniform and settled status for long-term residents holding third-country citizenship.25 As has been pointed out at several places in this book, the decisions on individual membership within a polity are not only visible in the definition of its insiders. Equally important is the scope of the status given to noncitizens resident on its
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territory (Walzer 1983: 61–3). Thus, with discussion on such issues, the Convention seemingly sought to determine the boundaries of the EU as a community of equal, rights-holding citizens. The upshot of this would be a significant curbing of member state prerogatives on boundary control in Europe. While the horizontal control within the EU’s borders has diminished as a consequence of European integration, this book has argued that the vertical dimension of membership decisions has to a large extent remained a national issue. The general tack of these proposals in the Convention was to also significantly Europeanize the vertical dimension of citizenship and membership practices. Not only that, at this stage of the Convention, democratic legitimacy was reiterated as one of the core issues that it ought to address.26 The debates toward the end of the “deliberating phase” focused among other issues on political equality and the need to make European institutions more directly relevant to Europe’s citizens.27 Further, some members advocated that one should broaden the nexus of participation and political rights by granting citizens the right to elect the president of the European Council.28 Not only political rights were raised at this juncture, however. After the strong advocacy of several Convention members,29 a working group on social Europe was set up as this had not been in the initial plan of the Praesidium. In its report, social justice, solidarity, and equality were proposed as additional values that ought to be included in the statement on the core values of the EU.30 In addition to these declaratory measures, there was also a focus on more concrete policy objectives in this report. These ranged from, for instance, full employment and social justice, to a broad notion of nondiscrimination, children’s rights, and health rights.31 Besides the latter two points, this did not, however, create a more focused approach to social rights as a central element of European citizenship. The most specific suggestion was to extend the scope of action in Article 42 TEC to all citizens and residents, which would mean that social rights linked to free movement, would not be tied exclusively to individual membership through nationality, but rather to the status of worker as such. In the plenary debates on social Europe, both the widening of values and the more concrete policy objectives were supported by many of the members.32 Within the “deliberating” phase, the mandate of the Convention was somewhat broadened to encompass questions that related to the structure and content for constituting a new Treaty framework for the EU. In this period, the constitutional mandate that was given by the European
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Council through the Laeken Declaration was clearly taken up by the Convention. This had some ramifications for the location of the concept of citizenship within its deliberations. Not only did citizenship become an essential element of the Convention’s work, there were also some important reform proposals—seen against the conceptual path highlighted in this book—and alternative conceptions at stake in this specific phase. In addition to these aspects, certain issues were consolidated and strengthened with regard to citizenship, while at the same time being linked to new aspects of how to conceptualize a constitutionalized EU in polity terms.
The “Drafting” Phase: Consolidation Once More Based on the debate following the preliminary draft Treaty, the Convention initiated the “drafting phase” of extensive deliberations in the plenary, with more fleshed out drafts of different parts of the future Constitutional Treaty. At this early juncture in the crucial drafting process, the focus was mainly on the need to clarify certain issues and take into account the diverse views that emanated from the first two phases of the Convention’s work. In doing so, the focus was first on the introductory articles that laid out the fundamentals of a European constitution.33 Again, values were held to be at the center of the basis for a Union. In fact, the value focus was somewhat widened through the inclusion of the concepts of justice and solidarity. Not only that, in addition to the promotion of peace and the well-being of its peoples, values were held to be a core objective of the Union.34 This value basis was not only retained on a declaratory level; later in the process, it was also argued that the criteria for EU membership ought to be that candidate countries share and adhere to these common values.35 The uncontroversial matter of fundamental rights as important through the incorporation of the Charter into the Treaty framework was retained in the draft. The proposed provisions on Union citizenship were, however, changed quite drastically, most significantly in terms of the membership dimension. In the new draft, one had simply adopted the Maastricht provisions on citizenship, as well as the Amsterdam “supplement” regarding the link between nationality and individual membership on the European level. Hence, the conception of European citizenship as a dual status of equal and partly voluntary citizenships on different levels was rejected at this juncture of the process.
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Again, citizenship debates in the EU sound like a broken record. As the stakes were raised and agreement had to be made, even “radically” minded members of the Convention agreed to diminish the far-reaching proposal to change citizenship politics in European integration. This is interesting and important as the Convention was the first “full-blown” attempt at actually writing a European constitution. The constitutio of such an endeavor is premised on the willingness of the constitutional drafters to seriously consider the basic principles, as it were the building blocks of the would-be polity. The members of Convention did exactly this on citizenship, but as they approached the finishing line, they turned to familiar and existing conceptions. As readers of this book will notice, this is not an unfamiliar story of European citizenship discourse. Radical proposals became path following conceptions in the end, both in the Spinelli Project and the Maastricht Process. This decision early in the drafting phase would have important consequences for the end-product of the Convention and for the framing of citizenship in the aftermath of its failure. The tempering of radical proposals on citizenship was perhaps a prelude to what would come. Compared to the preliminary draft Treaty, this proposal was in fact far more controversial among the Convention members. More issues were contentious and subject to extensive debate in the plenary. For instance, several amendments were proposed with regard to the values of the Union. Issues such as cultural and linguistic diversity, national and regional identities, and respect for national minorities were raised. The most divisive issue was the question regarding the inclusion of a religious reference in the fundamental values of the EU.36 Subsequently, this issue was fiercely debated by the plenary, without any consensus visible on the horizon.37 On the topic of citizenship, there were some calls for the replacement of the notion of “peoples” in the proposed Article 3 with “citizens.” The adoption of such a measure would surely have increased the symbolic import of citizenship as a foundational concern for the European polity. Regarding the concrete articles on citizenship, the most radical changes proposed were to grant the EU an independent right to decide on individual membership through the possibility of access to European citizenship after five years residence, an extension of the status to refugees and stateless persons, and finally some new rights, for instance, popular legislative initiative or the right to good administration.38 These changes were, however, proposed only by a few members of the Convention. Not surprisingly, then, these issues were on the whole not taken up in the
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subsequent debate regarding the specific provisions on fundamental rights and citizenship in the plenary.39 Again the path dependence regarding conceptions of European citizenship becomes visible. This was furthermore clearly in line with a typical trait of the constitution-making instances that have been studied in this book: the scaling down of novel proposals over time. In the “drafting” phase, the membership dimension was settled on par with the previously strong frame of the Maastricht provisions on Union citizenship. Thus, in the final instance, also within the Convention, nationality was retained as the primary norm for establishing who are members and who are not. Even in the event of “higher law-making” shielded from the nitty-gritty of “normal politics” (see Ackerman 1991), the conception of European citizenship as a harbinger for the dissociation of nationality from citizenship did not win sufficient support. The upshot of such an alternative conception of postnational citizenship on the European level, freed from its national “burden,” would have been a veritable transformation of the institution of citizenship, and not “just” a reconfiguration of different elements as an effect of more porous borders within European integration. Notwithstanding the lack of profound transformation within the Convention, the fact that such issues were seriously considered testify to a strengthened place of citizenship within the self-understanding of the EU as a polity. Not only that, the concepts of “citizens” and “citizenship” by themselves crucially underwent increased debate when the constitution was drafted. Thus, the importance of citizenship was clearly amplified when compared to the more modest role it played within the Spinelli Project, where its chief characteristics were settled relatively early in the process, and lacked the more foundational questions addressed in the Convention relating to values and identity. The diversity of the Convention was also visible in the debate on other aspects of the introductory articles in the draft Constitution. For instance, there was widespread opposition to the term “federal” as conducive to the European integration project, and related to that, many members wanted the emphasis focused on the Union as set up through the will of the nation-states, which related to the notion of “Treaty” as pivotal for the meaning of the text.40 Others wanted a stronger focus on “citizens” in the proposed Article 1.41 There was, thus, an inherent tension in the Convention between a focus on individual citizens as crucial for the EU’s self-understanding and the need for a stronger European citizenship, and the intergovernmental view of the member states as the primary units of consideration within such an integrated political system.42
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The lack of democratic legitimacy and transparency that had been acknowledged at the outset of the constitution-making process was taken up explicitly in the draft Constitution. Through a focus on the so-called “democratic life of the Union,”43 it was proposed to include an article on the equality of citizens before the EU’s institutions.44 On the basis of this equality in terms of citizenship status, the rights catalog on the EU level was broadened by linking it to an article on “participatory democracy.”45 Concretely, it was proposed to include a specific right of citizenship to participate in the democratic life of the EU. Clearly, the intention of this proposal was to go beyond the classic political citizenship attached to elections on the municipal and European levels. In the ensuing proposals for amendments and debate within the plenary regarding this title, there was a relatively low degree of divergence within the Convention. Most amendments involved linguistic changes, in addition to some calls for a more concrete catalog regarding modes of participation.46 The most radical measure proposed was the insertion of a so-called “citizen’s initiative” with regard to making decisions on contentious issues through referenda.47 The rights orientation of democratic, political participation was followed up by the debates of the plenary on these issues. There were, for instance, arguments for widening participatory rights to include voting rights in EU-wide referenda.48 It is also worth noting that a number of members wanted to specify that these rights were to be granted to European citizens and not only citizens as such. The theme of rights generally, and more specifically political rights and participation as central to the status of individuals continued to be at the forefront of the work and debates of the Convention. The Convention was clearly split on the link between rights and membership. This was most visible in the discussion on a proposal to grant access to the labor market to groups such as immigrants and asylum seekers, where some wanted this incorporated, while others advocated a strong link between formal citizenship and such rights.49 In the case of political rights and participation, there were an increasing number of proposals that were geared toward enhancing a notion of political citizenship at the European level. One example is the proposal to institute a directly elected president of the European Council through uniform, Europe-wide elections. In fact, this proposal was stated as a possibility to “strengthen or create a genuine European demos.”50 This was further linked to a perceived lack of democratic legitimacy if the president of the European Council was to be elected only by his peers.51
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Based on all these preliminary proposals and debates in the plenary, an even more comprehensive and revised draft Constitution was presented.52 In the introductory article, the notion of “citizens” was included as part of the foundation for an EU, which provided one aspect of dual legitimacy, where the “States of Europe” was the other.53 The idea and principle of free movement was also highlighted anew, in ways that had not been prevalent within the Convention’s deliberations: it was pointed out that a Community without frontiers benefited European citizens, and an article was added where free movement of persons was included.54 Thus, the constitutional and political principle of free movement was strengthened in this draft, notwithstanding the fact that it had not really figured in the previous debates. While free movement had not been prominent on the agenda as such, citizenship had been more to the forefront of the Convention’s debates, both in explicit and implicit terms. Except for the omission of equality between men and women, the citizenship provisions remained intact and clearly consolidated within the revised draft Constitution.55 There had, however, been some discussion regarding the status of rights provisions as a part of the articles on citizenship, as these would to some extent overlap with the Charter. Notwithstanding this, rights were retained as a pivotal part of the explicit concept of European citizenship. In fact, it was argued that the reason for this was that “these rights are essential to the very concept of Union citizenship and must therefore appear in the [part] . . . which defines the concept.”56 Hence, in the Convention, rights were seen as unequivocally linked to the existence of a viable concept and institution of European citizenship. The upshot of this is that as much as there were several calls for a more symbolic role for citizenship in the constitution, the concretization was framed around specific dimensions and the interplay between them. The increased attention paid to the very concept of citizenship did, then, in the end not produce a transformed conception. The rights orientation was clearly confirmed by the final emphasis on free movement. That it was left so late in the process, is perhaps a testament to it being taken for granted given its discursive role in citizenship politics from the very beginning of European integration. In the policy-oriented parts of the draft Constitution, principles related to the status of individuals that have been prevalent since the traditionally oriented conceptions of citizenship in the founding treaties, such as nondiscrimination based on nationality and a strong right to free movement,57 were highlighted. In fact, these articles were part
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of a wide-ranging set of provisions58 that specified concrete policy measures in order to attain the objectives linked to rights. Thus, in addition to a focus on citizenship in terms of the basic self-understanding of the EU as a polity, the Convention also spoke to such issues as a corollary to the more practical aims of European integration. These were clearly tied up with the long-standing aim of European integration: the creation of an internal market for workers, producers, and consumers. Hence, notwithstanding the advances that were made toward an acknowledgment of the general importance of citizens for the EU in the Convention’s work, in the final instance, market citizenship was indeed central to its overall conception of citizenship. Yet, in the case of free movement related to the internal market, the citizen as a worker was placed forefront: “Workers shall have the right to reside freely within the Union.”59 This is not surprising in itself, as it was part of an article under the heading of the “Internal market.” It does, however, indicate that when it came down to concrete aspects of the relation between citizens and the European polity, the former were conceived in a more constrained fashion than in the declaratory and symbolic setting of a preamble and the presentation of the broader aims and perspectives of a Constitutional Treaty. Throughout the Convention, there had been several calls for a more pronounced focus on social rights as a basic building block for a European citizenship. This did not, however, create any direct provisions on social rights comparable to, say, free movement or political rights.60 The only direct mention of social rights was that two former declarations on rights ought to be taken into consideration for the definition of the social policy objectives in the EU.61 The extent to which the issue of social policy was imparted with citizenship was mainly in terms of more broad policy objectives.62 Again, it is interesting to observe that proposals—which would move the conception of citizenship in the direction of a more comprehensive European status—committed, for instance, to a broader array of concrete citizenship rights than that had been prevalent thus far, was not followed up in the very Treaty. A stronger focus on social rights would not necessarily have meant that the conceptual path of transnational citizenship would have been broken. After all, social rights in the European setting have mostly been activated in second countries as a result of the exercise of free movement. Yet, enshrining social rights on a par with free movement rights and voting rights would surely have been a forceful signifier of the establishment of a thick European citizenship surpassing the market core of integration or
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the largely symbolic legitimacy of European elections that take place in strongly institutionalized national settings.63 Finally, free movement was augmented by advancing the absence of internal border controls in the area of freedom, security, and justice.64 This area did not, however, relate only to the rights of free movement, but also to the delineation of the European citizenry. There was also a professed notion of solidarity between member states with regard to issues of asylum and immigration. Thus, not only the rights of the individual were at stake, but also the boundaries of the community of citizens and member states underpinning European institutions. With the work on this draft Constitution, the Convention had reached a higher degree of agreement than at earlier stages in its work.65 At this juncture, amendments that were proposed dealt mainly with minor changes to the section on the democratic life of the Union, with some members who requested an even stronger emphasis on participatory democracy and a citizen’s initiative. The latter aspect of a citizen’s initiative was finally included in the draft66 on which the Convention reached consensus in terms of the preamble and the first two parts of the text. While there is clear evidence of consolidation with respect to previously “settled” conceptions, the issue of participation was even more pronounced within this last phase of the Convention. There was a shift here toward an increasing awareness of the importance of participation per se for European citizens. It was perceived as central to the European citizenry, not only through (potential) participation in the market or elections, but also as a specific right of European citizenship. In this sense, participation was not only conceived in implicit terms as a “by-product” of other rights, but also as a pivotal part of citizenship in itself. This conception of political citizenship in the final instance fell short of a republican-type citizenship with individual public participation at its core. As Menéndez (2005: 126–7) has highlighted, the potentially radical clout of political participation was tempered by limiting it through different mediating measures, such as linking a “citizen’s initiative” to the Commission as an arbiter of citizens’ concerns. Added to that, many of the aspects of participation that were linked to “the democratic life of the Union” did in fact not focus on individual citizens. Rather, it proffered a kind of “group citizenship” where civil society organizations were foreseen a privileged role in the observation of Union policies. Hence, in the end, I argue that this did not strengthen a notion of a European demos to any significant extent. Participation was clearly an important component for the conception of citizenship, but the creation of a
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genuinely free-standing political citizenship in the EU was passed over in the final draft of the Constitution. The only contentious issue of substantial import that remained on the agenda was that of the need or not for a reference to Christianity or Christian values to be included in the preamble.67 In the final instance, these issues pertaining to the question of the basis for a European identity68 were not included in the draft Constitution. Finally, after some more minor amendments as well as technical and linguistic changes69 to the whole text, and the absence of contentious issues with regard to the concept of citizenship and its dimensions, the Convention reached consensus on a draft Treaty70 that was presented to the Greek presidency of the European Council.71 As stated above, the Convention had previously reached a high degree of consensus on most aspects of the purported European Constitution. Hence, the final draft looked more or less like the immediately preceding drafts that had been scrutinized, debated, and amended by the plenary. With regard to citizenship, for instance, this was the case for all the provisions that had been important for its conceptualization within the Convention, including the direct provisions on Union citizenship. In the end, the last contentious issue of the Convention pertaining to citizenship, that of including an assertion of European identity in terms of faith and religion, was settled by a compromise in the preamble. Here, it was claimed that the values that were recognized as the basis for a European Constitution—of which several are important for citizenship—drew on “inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe.”72 That this would be the final issue to be settled within the Convention is interesting, as it speaks to a basic assumption that constitution-making entails more than discussion on technical issues of, say, institutional design. It is understood to involve questions and issues pertaining to the very foundation of the polity that is being constituted. It involves the questions “who are we?” and “what are we?” as a community of citizens that have come together to establish a common legal and political order. Soon, however, this gargantuan effort to create a unifying constitutional document of the supranational European polity would become derailed. The Convention was more democratically rooted than any Treaty negotiations in European history. But citizens in the end did not agree, at least not across the board. This chapter ends, therefore, with a reflection on the largely “frozen” state of citizenship in the “mourning” phase after the public failure of the European constitution.
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The “Mourning” Phase: Constitutional Failure and Citizenship Against the goals of EU institutions, national governments and political elites, the citizens of France and the Netherlands in the end rejected the Constitutional Treaty.73 This rejection by the citizenries of two founding member states plunged the EU into political crisis. Through this act of citizenship, the citizenries in these two countries effectively shut the door for the strong symbol of a constitution-making moment “beyond the nation-state.” European leaders responded to this crisis by postponing national referenda and ratification processes, and by calling for a “reflection period” in order to avoid the further derailment of necessary institutional reforms. This is not the place to rehearse arguments for why this happened or the debate on the choices made in the period of “constitutional impasse” (Fossum and Menéndez 2011) before negotiations on the Lisbon Treaty commenced in 2007. That being said, it is of importance for the study of European citizenship to reflect on how the concept of citizenship fared in this time of constitutional failure. This final reflection is imperative for discussing present challenges and future prospects of European citizenship. While member state governments used the reflection period to save the scraps of the constitution through work on a new IGC-based Treaty lacking “constitutional symbolism,” the European Commission launched “A Citizens’ Agenda.”74 This was explicitly linked to the difficulties with ratification of the Constitutional Treaty. The remedy that was proposed by the Commission was framed around the notion of citizens and their location within the integration project. This was based on the understanding that “EU citizens want a greater understanding of, and say in, what the EU does and how it does it.”75 This prompted a mention of the need to promote fundamental rights and develop the concept of EU citizenship. In this sense, the final policy-oriented document issued by the Commission framed the earlier focus on promoting fundamental rights and developing the concept of EU citizenship76 as an unmistakable byproduct of the tangible outputs of EU policy-making visible in the efforts of crafting a single market: one of the Commission’s main aims over the last 20 years. When faced with crisis and a perceived need to act, the Commission returned to the familiar, in terms of how it framed the standing of individual citizens within the EU project. This postconstitutional framing of citizenship sheds light on the largely unchanged stature of citizenship
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in the ensuing Lisbon Treaty. Citizenship in the Lisbon Treaty was more or less a carbon copy of the citizenship provisions that the Convention agreed upon, and that were put forward for ratification by the European Council. Treaty-based citizenship remained transnational in its core, based on nationality and free movement as its basic building blocks. The core of European citizenship, in this sense, remained attached to the long stretch of European integration as a political project based on market integration and the opening of European borders. The act of rejection by its constituent citizens was, then, not seen as a fundamental disagreement with the location of citizenship in the political system of the EU. Citizenship has perhaps become “just” another issue in European politics. It has become “normalized” after the 20 odd years of citizenship struggle that has marked European integration since the watershed of the Maastricht Treaty. The highly politicized moment of constitutional rejection did not prompt any countermovement of more politicization regarding citizenship. It rather stayed on its course of Treaty-based and policy-oriented rights primarily for those citizens that venture across state borders on the European continent. Perhaps, politics have now reached an end in this field? The answer might be a conditional “yes.” Citizenship is settled as an institution that is more intimately linked to the ethos of integration than ever before. Recent developments point toward the Court finally taking over the citizenship mantle of Europe by pushing the case for the fundamental rights status of Europeans. The tangible and possible effects of these developments are dealt with in the next chapter.
Conclusion As citizenship had been more or less explicitly on the agenda of European institutions from the 1970s onwards, and finally became institutionalized through the Maastricht Treaty, it is no surprise that issues of citizenship also figured rather prominently in the Convention. This attention did in the end, however, not create any radical changes in the overall conception that had been brought forward through Union citizenship, and that had previously been developed and consolidated through policy-making processes, Court decisions, and instances of discussion on more basic questions of the institutional and political architecture of European integration. In fact, in a constitution-making process that took its general cue from a perceived need to reform European institutions in order to increase
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democratic legitimacy as well as institutional effectiveness, the conception of citizenship was more or less tied to previous developments. Rights were held to be the core aspect that creates a link between individual citizens and European institutions already at the outset of the Convention. On the whole, rights issues were not particularly contentious. As the debates proceeded, typical European rights, such as voting rights in suband supranational elections as well as free movement and nondiscrimination, were brought forward as core rights of European citizenship. A social citizenship based on rights was proposed, but did not in the end materialize as a significant element in discussions on issues of citizenship. This does, however, not mean that the Convention refrained from discussion on issues that departed from existing ideas of European citizenship. In fact, there was an inherent tension regarding citizenship in the last two phases of the Convention. When the deliberations turned toward widespread discussion on the broad range of issues that a redrafting of the EU through a Constitutional Treaty entailed, issues of citizenship emerged with a certain radical clout. This was especially the case with regard to membership. In contrast to the proverbial assertion that a European citizenship status depends on nationality, the Convention seriously considered the establishment of a dual status of equal national and European citizenship institutions. If this had been kept by subsequent drafts of the constitution, it would have created a more independent European citizenship status marked by a voluntary membership on the part of the individual citizen. This purported Europeanness was in the end, however, not picked up in the crucial “drafting” phase. Also in the Convention, one followed the conceptual path of citizenship in terms of the crucial differentiation between insiders and outsiders. Without much debate, the proposed dual status was scrapped, and membership again reverted back to the nationality principle that had been institutionalized through the “supplement clause” of the citizenship provisions of the Treaty of Amsterdam. If membership ultimately followed the conceptual path, there were in fact some more significant changes with regard to participation and identity. Participation was increasingly highlighted throughout the Convention as an important element of the relationship between individual citizens and European institutions. In fact, it surpassed its prior “dependence” on political rights and market rights, and was also perceived as an element of belonging to the EU. In terms of the more minute details regarding participation, there were also here some tensions between the somewhat radical conception professed in the “drafting”
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phase and the aspects that were emphasized when the completion of a full draft Constitution was at stake. Indeed, participation remained at the center of attention throughout the Convention. Ultimately, however, its importance for individual citizens was circumscribed through the decision to address the nexus of policy-making and participation in terms of technocracy and expertise.77 The notion of identity that emerged in the Convention was clearly oriented toward the individual. There was a clear move in the Convention toward a somewhat greater emphasis on identity. There was an increasing propensity to link values with the fundamental rights status of individuals that a European constitution would establish and support. Indeed, this emphasizes how rights that had been at the core of conceptions since the beginning of European integration were dynamically interlinked, not only with membership or participation, but in the final instance also with identity. More broadly speaking in terms of the EU’s self-understanding, identity was in fact one of the contentious issues in the final moments of the “drafting” phase. Yet, in the end, this contentiousness did not feed into the final draft Constitution, but was rather couched in general language regarding the diversity of the humanist and religious legacies of Europe. Thus, the collective values/individual rights nexus yielded more concrete elements of the conception of citizenship. Within the Convention, then, European citizenship was much closer to a “community of rights” (Dobson 2007: 137) in the making, than a citizenship steeped in a predetermined understanding of the foundation for the community from which a given status of individuals is constructed. These points regarding identity also sum up the overall conception of citizenship that emerged from the constitution-making efforts of the Convention. Rights based on prior nationality and linked to the crossing of the bounded community upon which these rights were activated, were consolidated as the core of European citizenship. Other dimensions were mainly activated as a knock-on effect of this transnational rights status, and notwithstanding efforts to strengthen the participatory element of citizenship in political terms, in the final instance, the rights dimension was clearly the one that pieced together a viable status for individuals within the EU, not only in the perception of the Convention, but the European integration process as a whole.
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Chapter 8
European Projects, Resilience of the “National,” and Citizenship in the EU
This book started out asking whether citizenship in the EU context was European, national, or “in-between.” The answer to this question is clearly in-between. European citizenship is neither a completely Europeanized institution or a fully insulated national prerogative where outside influence is not visible. It is rather a truly transnational construct that builds on the one hand on nationality as the primary demarcation of membership and access to rights, and on the other hand on border-crossing participation and modes of identity. In this chapter, this transnational argument is utilized in a further discussion of the “multilevel” character of European citizenship. In doing this, the chapter draws on the empirical findings of the previous seven chapters, and highlights the constant tension in EU citizenship discourse between what can be called European projects and national traditions. Through this focus, the chapter highlights and appraises the path dependent character of European citizenship and the resilience of nationality as one of its “founding” principles. As such, this chapter also underscores the “normality” of constitutional politics on citizenship in the EU. Despite radical reform proposals pointing in the direction of a stronger supranational and postnational European citizenship, the path dependency of transnational conceptions prevailed in the final instance also in EU constitution-making settings, most recently evident in the Convention. Building on this main argument of the book, the chapter starts out by addressing the extent to which the nation-state has in fact become obsolete in processes of reconfiguring the relationship between individual rights-holding citizens and political institutions. Rather boldly, this conjecture is labeled a mirage as the purported development toward “ever more inclusive forms, thereby realizing the cosmopolitan ideals of mankind” (Kratochwil 2001: 163) seems to be continuously countered by particularized political assertions and solutions. This may not always
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be obvious in the case of European citizenship and the idea of postnationalism, but on closer inspection it seems that this is “part of our predicament” as Kratochwil (2001: 163) so succinctly puts it. In making good of this argument, the next section deals with the seemingly endless flow of radical proposals for citizenship reform (or one might sometimes say “revolution”) under the remit of European integration and how these were constantly met by national resilience in the final stages of Treaty reform or constitution-making. “National” refers here both to actual member state reticence toward certain ideas as well as a continuous discursive framing of citizenship issues that even Europeanists could not transcend in several cases. Some critics might, however, argue here that this line of reasoning is increasingly futile as we have seen the true postnational face of European citizenship in a recent string of important ECJ rulings (see e.g. Joppke 2010: 164). These new horizons of European citizenship and its possible “future governance” to use Kostakopoulou’s (2008) nice phrase can, however, be contrasted from a transnational perspective as well as by other political developments that have ensued in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis and the influx of migrants to Western Europe after Eastern enlargement in 2004. The chapter ends with a plea for more prudence in scholarly and political predictions on the development of ever more inclusive forms of political association in a globalized world. Scholars and practitioners alike might well take more care in understanding the nuances of EU politics as a multilevel phenomenon marked by constant confrontation and conciliation between projects, ideas, and conceptions on the EU and member state levels.
The Mirage of Transcending the Nation-State Are we witnessing a third transformation of citizenship akin to Robert A. Dahl’s (1989) famous analysis of democratic government? After first transforming from a status of “worthiness” in Antiquity (Pocock 1995) to a more comprehensive premodern citizenship marked by inequality and hierarchies of statuses (Isin 2002; Riesenberg 1992) and second to the idea and practice of full and equal political citizenship in the nationstate (Marshall 1992), the logical conclusion for many would be that we are entering a third era: that of postnational citizenship. The practice of dual citizenship is on the rise and is increasingly accepted by states that previously stood firmly on the idea of unitary citizenship (Kivisto
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and Faist 2007; Spiro 1997). The phenomenon of transnationalism is no longer novel, but a fact of globalized politics and societies. Transnational flows of migrants, services, goods, and capital increases the right to have rights for individuals in countries of residence, in addition to that of their nationality (Soysal 1994). The European integration project is in itself constructed on the foundation of free movement (Maas 2007). Member states have duties not only toward their own nationals, but also toward European citizens. The list could be longer. Contrary to this list of important developments, the empirical analyses of this book point toward another conclusion. Is it really that “simple”? Does citizenship develop in a “linear” fashion toward ever more inclusive forms? This book has shown how this is not necessarily the case, taking the crucial European experience as a starting point. The EU is the most advanced project in polity-making and integration “beyond the nation-state.” While this process has clearly led to a push for the reconfiguration of citizenship, the nation-state is still not bypassed as the most significant factor of modern citizenship politics. As this chapter will show, the “specter” of the nation-state seems to haunt postnational developments and projects of citizenship. There are always two sides to a coin. There are remnants of the nation-state and the modality of the “national” even in the most radical developments of postnational rights provision as evident in the case law of the ECJ. I use the word “mirage,” therefore, not to undercut the fact there have been crucial developments in loosening the trinity between nation, territorial state, and citizenship. It is used as a “warning” that we should not yet predict the end of the nation-state as a significant institutional gatekeeper and frame of reference for the ultimate “meaning” of citizenship. The history of citizenship is one of constant struggle over who should decide on inclusion and exclusion (Isin 2002). In the modern era this has been the nation-state. Transformations of the membership modality of citizenship have in previous times been linked to the fall of empires, new religious authority, political revolutions, and popular movements (Riesenberg 1992; see also Marshall 1992). The current postnational “era” of European integration exhibits a more mixed message. While the nation-state clearly is no longer the sole provider of individual rights, the mode of inclusion and exclusion is still strongly attached to it. There is, then, a potential disjuncture between rights, membership, and identity in our time. As a result of this, the complexity of citizenship has increased. This book’s focus on different elements of citizenship has helped illuminate this phenomenon. In the remainder of this chapter,
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I highlight this complexity by distilling its basic message that citizenship in the EU—despite strong reform proposals, powerful ideas, and a push for reformulation of the “national” in citizenship—remains resolutely transnational and market-oriented.
Failed Reform Proposals and Resilience of the “National” Many scholars and politicians alike date the creation of European citizenship to the famous “constitutional moment” of the Maastricht Treaty. This book has, however, highlighted how citizenship was not created ex nihilo in that ambitious Treaty. From the embryonic beginnings of “citizenship” in the run-up to the ECSC Treaty, norms of membership, specific rights, modes of participation, and an individual status imbricated with the “ethos” of integration developed along a relatively clear conceptual and institutional path. European citizenship in the Maastricht Treaty has also been built on this foundation made up of free movement rights and nationality. Path dependence in this sense does, however, not mean that European citizenship discourse has been marked by “linearity” or lack of conflict. There are good theoretical and historical reasons to distrust harmonious and continuous narratives of citizenship (Isin 2002: 3). Citizenship is a proverbial political concept. It is the institutionalized signifier for strategies of inclusion and exclusion—membership and nonmembership— for individuals in a world sliced into different political communities. How we understand citizenship is, therefore, not an innocent scientific exercise. Historically “objective” definitions will not hold as the traditional concepts and ideas by which we understand citizenship often has been invented through strategic copying and appropriation by powerful citizens, groups, and political institutions (Isin 2002). Indeed a main argument of this book is that the politics of citizenship in the EU have been marked by a constant tension between different ideas of citizenship “beyond the nation-state” and already institutionalized conceptions of rights, membership, and identity. At several critical junctures, existing conceptions of citizenship were challenged by radical ideas for a “reshuffling” of citizenship rights, norms of membership, and modes of participation. Such radical ideas have been especially marked by postnational and cosmopolitan notions of citizenship. Common to these notions is the severing of the ties in unitary citizenship between the nation, state, identity, and rights. In an increasingly interdependent,
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integrated, and globalized world with the EU as the foremost example among international institutions, the unitary model of citizenship is becoming less relevant in this view. Despite the reformative push toward more postnational conceptions of citizenship, the transnational thrust of rights and membership is still going strong in European integration. While this book has not sought to explain this state of affairs in the conventional political science mode of explanation, some clues can be provided based on its discursive analysis. The transnationalism of the link between member state citizens, European institutions, and the Treaty framework of European unification was from the outset Janus faced. On the one hand, it introduced the idea of free movement as the main mechanism for the engaging of citizens in the integration project. On the other hand, the rights that followed in the wake of such mobility were constructed from a classic logic of inclusion/exclusion. Hence, free movement is discursively at odds with national citizenship as it infringes on the fundamental borders between states, political communities, and systems of rights. But the “bordering” of citizenship in terms of access through membership and rights was maintained by the nationality principle. This move, if perhaps unintended by European and domestic leaders, was a serious dent in the postnational potential of the citizens/institutions nexus in supranational politics. Postnational ideas and a cosmopolitan logic were mostly visible in reform proposals linked to the crucial membership dimension of citizenship. As should be well known by now to readers of this book, norms of membership are necessitated in citizenship politics by the division of the world into territorially based political entities. This membership logic has been no less important in European citizenship discourse, albeit as mentioned above it has been marked by an inherent tension between more or less inclusionary or exclusionary standards under the remit of supranational integration. Consequently, postnational reform proposals have sought to push European citizenship toward more inclusive forms of citizenship. I have shown in this book that arguments on the potential and desirability of breaking the exclusivity of unitary citizenship have been widespread in European citizenship debates. The nationality principle that shaped European citizenship rights followed exactly the logic of unitary, national citizenship. The rights that citizens of member states could enjoy as a consequence of European integration did not amount to a selfstanding citizenship status. Rather, it was wholly dependent on holding
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member state citizenship. Moreover, it followed from this logic that European rights could not be used against one’s own state, but rather followed as a knock-on effect of utilizing the right of mobility into another member state. These second-country rights provided European citizens with a kind of semicitizenship status in other member states based on the European treaties. This logic prevailed strongly until the Maastricht Treaty, but is still today at the core of European citizenship. It was in this context that the ideas of supranational competence on access to citizenship and dual citizenship gained leverage in the debate. Reform proposals on supranational competence in decisions on who are members and who are not—the classic inclusion/exclusion nexus— were frequent throughout European citizenship discourse. Advocated already in the 1970s, it found special resonance in the Spinelli Project, the Maastricht Process, and in the Convention on the Future of Europe. The basic argument behind these proposals was that the EU had gained considerable competence in the field of individual rights and that it ought, therefore, as well to have some competence in decisions on who could enjoy these rights. Such reasoning was also linked to the unclear situation of so-called third-country nationals under European integration. With membership decisions resting with the nation-states, European institutions had no political means to include such individuals as full European citizens. This sentiment was particularly strong among federalists in the EP, noticeable, for instance, in the Spinelli Project. The “inverted federalism” of decisions on citizenship in the EU was seen as unsustainable in the long run as the supranational level increased its policy leverage and Europeanization continued its march toward common standards, norms, and values among European countries. On all occasions, however, the influence of the “national” won through. With the exception of the ECJ, European institutions still lack considerable power in decisions on European citizenship. As the focus has been on conceptual issues and discursive developments, this book has not analyzed in detail the responses of member state actors on these proposals. Nevertheless, the empirical analysis of citizenship debates highlights how such radical proposals were often promoted early in reform processes for ultimately to be suppressed in the final stages. In the end, nationality remained resilient against the considerable normative weight of postnational arguments. The idea of dual citizenship links nicely in with the issue of supranational competence in citizenship decisions. European citizenship is “special” in the sense that the rights-granting EU is an unsettled polity
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compared to states. What is then the appropriate relation between individuals and the institutions of such a polity? The answer has been twofold in European integration. On the one hand, only member state citizens hold basic European citizenship rights. On the other hand, these rights can be invoked by European citizens against other member states and the EU itself. There is thus a duality of citizenship and rights in the EU setting that is politically tenuous. Not only that, from the perspective of a contested polity that lacks a strong standing in the citizenry and is increasingly held up to deficits in democracy and legitimacy terms, this is troublesome. The forging of explicit citizenship in the Maastricht Treaty was clearly understood as part of the panacea for these deficits. But this did not prompt a radical rethink of European citizenship. It followed in the path of previous conceptions. It was in this “path dependent” citizenship climate that the idea of dual citizenship in the EU gained some following. What did dual citizenship mean in the EU citizenship discourse? In the reform proposals that surfaced, for instance, in the Spinelli Project and the Convention it was given a particular twist of voluntarism. European and national citizenship were conceptualized as self-standing citizenship institutions of equal stature. This in itself is particularly radical as national dependence has been a bedrock of European citizenship since the ECSC Treaty. The voluntary character of this dual citizenship was visible in that citizens would be given the right to invoke one of the two statuses at their own behest. If implemented, the vertical notion of citizenship for the individual would give way to a horizontal conception. This “consumerist” pick-and-choose version of citizenship was of course pieced together to give the European part of the EU citizenship equation a stronger standing. Did this, then, turn into a turf war between Europeanism and nationalism in the citizenship field in the EU? The simple answer is no. The “national” as an institutional starting point and conceptual marker for citizenship also in the realm of supranational integration prevailed. The most striking example here is the Convention. As a self-professed and broadly representative constitution-making body, the Convention was set up to prod the far-reaching question on what kind of polity the EU is. This impetus prompted some radical proposals, but it is certainly worth noting that even in this setting the nationality aspect of citizenship was proven to be widely resilient. Postnational ideas and proposals did not win through on any count when it came to issues like membership and rights for European citizens.
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It is interesting to note here that these failed proposals and radical ideas did not emanate from one source only. Rather, they originated from, for instance, member states, reform committees, and the EP. Hence, it is not only, say, the “Europeanist” or “Federalist” phalanx in the EP that have pushed the postnational agenda against intergovernmentalists in the member states and the Council. It has been a more general concern among those who would argue for a stronger break in European citizenship with the paradigmatic national and statist model. Indeed in terms of rights and modes of participation there have been certain moves away from the exclusivist container of the nation-state. Nevertheless, the crucial moment of access to such rights and participatory opportunities always relates back to a national grounding of citizenship. Even in the most advanced project of international integration, the national viewpoint and understanding of membership is still highly relevant. Having said that, it can surely be argued that these reflections on the failure of reform proposals and the resilience of the “national” also beg the question of whether the glass is half empty or half full. To complicate matters further on this score, the next section charts recent developments of citizenship discourse in the EU in light of ECJ “activism” and European crises.
New Horizons: European Crises and ECJ Activism At the time of writing, Europe is undergoing a turbulent phase. On the one hand, European institutions and debt-ridden member states struggle with the aftershocks of the 2009 economic crisis, as well as managing the flows of refugees and migrants into France, Spain, and Italy after the “Arabic Spring” of 2011. On the other hand, the ECJ continues to march on in the name of judicial Treaty-interpretation with a string of cases that have underscored the fundamental character of European citizenship (Wollenschläger 2011). What do these developments mean for the overall argument of this book? Is the conceptually and institutionally entrenched transnational citizenship finally undergoing a postnationalization or, if you will, cosmopolitization that could not have been foreseen based on the previous chapters of this book? As always, the message is rather mixed and conclusions clearly depend on the eyes of the beholder. This section does not aim at prediction on future developments. It is, however, important to discuss the “new horizons” of European citizenship discourse and how these set the stage for future
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debates and policy choices. Citizenship is never set in stone. This is no less true for the European context, despite the message of this book that it has proven to be difficult to radically reform a special status of membership, rights, and participation that has been so intimately linked to the ethos of integration. The parallel developments of crisis management and ECJ activism in the citizenship field may at first sight not have much to do with each other. At closer look, however, they both relate to the topic of transnational citizenship and its consequences for (European) citizens and European integration writ large. The aftermath of the financial crisis with pressure on public services and welfare state provisions in most EU countries has put the idea of free movement and European social rights under pressure. Indeed, in May 2011 the Danish government announced that it would resurrect border controls. Danish officials denied that this was in breach of the free movement clauses of the Schengen Agreement. They argued that it was mainly about crime prevention through the strengthening of customs oversight. The symbolic importance of this move should nevertheless not be underestimated. Several member states with Germany and Sweden as the most vocal strongly criticized the Danish government’s strategy for going against the basic idea of “no borders” as a pinnacle of European integration. Several MEPs and Commission officials moreover questioned not only the legal but also the ethical dimension of reclosing borders in a Europe that have sought to transcend this powerful signifier for the exclusivity of national territory and state sovereignty. Such debate was unthinkable at the beginning of the twenty-first century when European institutions and national leaders ventured into constitution-making and large-scale enlargement. That optimism has turned to pessimism after popular reticence against further integration, a resurgence of national identity debates, and economic downturn. It is, then, not surprising that even a basic or founding principle of integration that all EU members subscribe to through ratification of the Treaty comes into play in a time of crisis. The upshot of this is that the politics of rights become intertwined with identity issues in a time of crisis. After the financial crisis and persistent economic problems in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain, European solidarity has become increasingly questioned. This solidarity is built into the very fabric of transnational citizenship in the EU (Delanty 2007). Its basic precepts build on the activation of rights for citizens in other countries than their own. In European integration, this is no longer an exclusive prerogative. Different from human rights such
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European rights have been framed as “automatic” and seamless. They make up an inviolable “right to have rights” within a bounded political and legal community on the supranational level. The Danish solution to the “problem” of a borderless Europe is in this sense clearly linked to identity. The “container” idea of the nation-state is seemingly back in full swing also in the most advanced project of integration between states. This state of affairs was in fact partly foreboded by the politics of rights that was adopted by most member states in the period of Eastern enlargement, with the exception of the United Kingdom and Sweden. As the core right of European citizenship, the full and unlimited exercise of free movement for citizens of the new member states was suspended for seven years (Reich 2005: 688–9). The Council granted each of the old member states discretion in restricting entry for Eastern Europeans on the basis of protecting their labor markets. By admitting new citizens to the table, but not allowing them the meal in this sense, the EU in fact sanctioned unequal individual membership. This is important to highlight as unrestricted entry to and travel within the territory of the membership granting political unit is one of the core characteristics of modern citizenship (Walzer 1983). In choosing suspension of rights and a transitional period, the Council also underscored the strong national quality of European citizenship; ultimate decision on access to full membership is to a large extent a nation-state issue. In addition, this highlights the “special” character of European citizenship. It is much more a status linked to the pursuit of economic ends, than full-fledged citizenship in the polis. There might have been prudential reasons for such a limitation on the access to membership, rights, and participation for Eastern Europeans. Yet, the upshot of this is that the very gist of citizenship that has developed over more than 50 years of integration in Europe has not been constitutionalized to the extent that it could not be used as a “bargaining chip” in the negotiations with new member states. Hence, when the aim is to shed light on the politics of EU institutions and their relations to individual citizens, there is a continuing need for empirical investigation into the practices that shape both the concrete scope and specific institutional form of citizenship rights. This development in the last decade is not surprising in itself. The linking of political community, territoriality, and identity has proven to be problematic in the EU. While the EU has developed into a complex polity with interlocking institutions that affect citizens in most walks of
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life, it has not developed a comprehensive notion of how to piece this together as a “community of strangers” (see Castiglione 2009: 49–51). Such a political community might as Castiglione argues be based on different aspects of identity—memory, culture, language, or ethnicity— but it is nevertheless characterized by inclusive relationships of “relative familiarity” and solidarity between citizens. The degree to which this can be created on the EU level is unclear. If we assume that there is a link between citizenship policy, rights, and citizens’ notion of belonging to the polity, the EU system is tilted toward the member states. That one or more of these member states then “react” retrospectively against the kernel of free movement is perhaps not so surprising. EU institutions continuously highlight the need for legitimacy and increased trust of citizens in the European project. After the nation-state “imitations” in the identity project of the 1970s and 1980s (see Shore 2000), this is, however, increasingly linked to the outputs of policy-making and the possibilities created for citizens, rather than a notion of political community.1 Hence, while EU policy-making has a substantial effect on the everyday lives and opportunities of citizens, the ultimate decisions on “who the Europeans are” that can benefit from this system continues to rest with the member states. With the recent crisis management and popular dissatisfaction in mind it seems that the forging of postnational solutions for citizenship and identity are more distant than ever before. Europe can at this crucial moment in history simply not afford it, either economically or politically. This comes in addition to the argument that European citizenship falls short of its “promise” of denationalizing citizenship, as third-country nationals are excluded from the benefits that European citizenship rights “produce” in second countries of the Union (Maas 2008). But this is not the only interpretation of the membership/rights interface of European citizenship. Following a string of judgments from the ECJ, free movement and residence are interpreted as inherently part of European citizenship (Joppke 2010: 164). Not only that, the ECJ has in recent years ruled that citizens can invoke European rights against their “own” state.2 And in the Zambrano ruling, the ECJ stated that third-country nationals do have rights of residence on EU territory, provided they have a link with EU citizens.3 The question is how far-reaching such judicial decisions are. Do they lead to significant changes in the construction of European citizenship as we know it? One answer is that these developments are the “peak” of postnational citizenship in the EU (Joppke 2010: 164). In this interpretation, then, European rights have surpassed their
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original foundation on the nationality principle and the vertical membership structure where the member states would always have the final word on inclusion. It could be argued that this goes further than just postnationalizing rights provisions in contemporary Europe. Some would claim that this “new horizon of rights” is indeed the postnational solution that could cure the democratic malaise and popular rebuff of European institutions. It is still too early to pass clear judgment on this issue. But these developments do not engage with political citizenship and democratic participation. It has been shown throughout this book that transnational citizenship in the EU is resolutely market-oriented. While EU citizens hold supranational political rights, these have not been at the core of citizenship debates. Not only that, the “postnational” rights that Joppke (2010) emphasize are more often than not linked to some form of movement between member states and a modicum of linkage to a member state through national citizenship (Nic Shuibhne 2002). The particularity of citizenship is, in other words, hard to overcome even in the most advanced system of international integration. It follows from this that it is not unlikely that such particularism also in the future will continue to “bind” rights and citizenship. While the rules of inclusion might approach cosmopolitan ideas of universal rights and borderless membership, the form of citizenship is at the end of the day always grounded in a primary affiliation of citizens. Even in the Zambrano case the rights of third-country nationals is premised on links with member state nationals that thereby have fundamental rights as EU citizens. Without the presence of such a link it seems unlikely that the fundamental status of European citizenship could have been invoked by the ECJ. This has the consequence that whatever the criteria for access to European rights, nationality and free movement continue to be very much part of the whole equation of rights. This state of affairs highlights that even in the EU, the practice of citizenship leans toward unity in the decisive moment of membership allocation. Consequently, this makes it difficult to foster the concept of “multiple citizenship” (Magnette 2005: 174). European rights are subjected to an exclusionary logic, both internally and externally. Benhabib (2004: 149) has described this state of affairs succinctly: “[t]he obverse side of membership in the EU is a sharper delineation of the conditions of those who are non-members.” European citizenship is inclusive in terms of opening up political communities to noncitizens horizontally within the Union, yet exclusive in that there is no uniform policy on the rights of non-EU citizens.
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Only time can tell, then, how broad the scope of fundamental rights of European citizenship against one’s own state will become. This is not only dependent on EU-level developments. It also remains to be seen how the member states will react. It may be expected that the member states will strengthen already tight rules for access to the territory for third-country nationals in the first place. It is not unlikely that nationality laws will become more restrictive in ius soli rules for acquisition of citizenship and in the requirements for naturalization of noncitizens. The transnationalism of European citizenship might, then, stand in the way of realizing the postnational potential highlighted by the Court as well as scholars. In other words: the move to underline the fundamental status of European rights might trigger a backlash that finds its legitimacy in the continued relevance of nationality for the basic construction of citizenship in the EU. In the introductory chapter, it was underlined that the creation of citizenship outside the nation-state frame challenges our understanding of citizenship. The idea of postnational citizenship is the most developed theoretical answer to this challenge. That being said, this book has highlighted a discontinuity between theory and practice. The European citizenship challenge has prompted a partial strengthening of the national as a starting point for citizenship institutions also on the supranational stage. In other words, as a challenge, European citizenship has its limits (Howard 2009; Vink 2005). European integration has not led to the postnationalization of citizenship where nationality, belonging, and boundaries no longer matter for the membership of individuals in rightsgranting democratic polities. Effectively, European citizens enjoy a kind of privileged semicitizenship (Cohen 2009) in other EU member states than their own. Here, an alternative interpretation could be that the reality of supranational political rights in European and local elections is a strong rupture of the historical linkage between voting rights, political membership, and territorial nation-states. But, as highlighted in previous chapters of this book, for such developments to lead to a comprehensive delinking of citizenship and the principle of nationality, this would also have to be considered necessary on the national level. In other words, the EU is an example of a polity where “[a] semi-citizen may have some, but not all political rights” (Cohen 2009: 6). In liberal European states and a European policy environment that pushes Europeanization, the link between political membership and national citizenship continues to be of importance.
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Implications of Studying Transnational Citizenship How does this book’s argument on the trajectory of European citizenship discourse then hold up against existing research and theorization on European citizenship? At the outset, I argue that the empirical analysis of this book highlights that much research on European citizenship has been weak in locating the peculiarities and specific elements of citizenship at given junctures of the integration process. In making good of this claim, this section addresses its implications for theory. The analytical approach of the book was based on the reasoning that citizenship should be studied from the vantage point of analytically distinct, yet, potentially interrelated elements. In doing so, the idea was that one could tease out the relative importance of membership, rights, identity, and participation in the discursive formation of European citizenship. In all, this book has highlighted two main aspects with regard to research on European citizenship. First, it has contributed to highlighting the elements that have provided the enduring nucleus of European citizenship politics upon which other elements were built. Secondly, by focusing not only on “successes,” but also on “failures” it has highlighted how this “nuclear” base of citizenship became sticky and hard to change despite the overwhelming transformation of EU institutions over 60 odd years of integration. I argue that this is an important lesson as it demonstrates the specificity of citizenship in terms of which elements have been central to conceptions at given points in time. Moreover, the book has through this focus highlighted the critical junctures where things could have taken a different turn. Hence, I have been able to trace the conceptual development of citizenship issues, without resorting to theoretical arguments on viability or normative arguments on desirability at those points in time where alternative conceptions of citizenship have been, say, minuscule or have not fitted with specific ideas or models. More concretely, what are the main theoretical lessons that can be drawn out of the book’s transnational insight? The focus on citizenship as a complex of different elements and their different “roles” in the specific European setting underlined that one should not assume theoretically at the outset that certain elements must be activated for citizenship to be relevant for individuals within a given political and institutional space. Or, conversely, it highlights that it is also problematic to assume that such a citizenship, given that it has been conceived within a process of market and political integration above the nation-state, necessarily must release
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the concept from its “classic” language of nationality. Focusing on the EU/domestic linkage in terms of the discursive “role” of nationality as a norm of membership has in this sense served to answer the question of whether citizenship in the EU is European, national, or “in-between.” The transnationality of citizenship in the EU underscores exactly the continuous framing of rights, membership, participation, and identity at the interface between the national and the European. This framing is, however, uncertain as it involves the balancing of an array of interests, identities, and actors on the different levels (often adding the subnational level in federal states as well). The concept of “transnational” is fruitful, therefore, as it entails different limits and potential to citizenship construction than those of, say, “supranational” or “postnational.”4 Supranational citizenship implies the forging of a comprehensive system of directly applicable rights on the EU level, while postnational citizenship theorizes the delinking of rights from nationality. In contrast, the concept of “transnational” directs attention to the relative degree to which EU citizenship discourse proffers developments on the EU level per se, between EU institutions and nation-states, or at the junctures between member states as a result of EU politics. The conceptual move of focusing on transnational features emphasizes, therefore, how the potential for radical reconfiguration of citizenship through, say, a “dissociation” of rights from nationality may be more limited than often argued in research on citizenship beyond the nation-state. Hence, the conceptualization of citizenship as transnational contributes to the literature by highlighting the continued prevalence of linking citizenship to political communities rather than human rights, at the same time as there are developments toward increasingly complex multilevel and international configurations of rights and membership. Studying citizenship in the EU as an “in-between” phenomenon moreover disproves grandiose theoretical claims such as that of Aron (1974) on the impossibility of citizenship outside the nation-state frame. Rather than being “impossible,” lasting discursive imprints have highlighted European citizenship as a specific form of citizenship that at once has deconstructed and reinforced the link between citizenship and nationality. This link is not, however, one of congruence between the concepts of citizenship, identity, and the nation-state, but rather one where the status of individuals has been made dependent on multiple levels providing different characteristics of citizenship.5 By highlighting that there was a political space wherein a particular status of individuals emerged already at the outset of European integration,
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this book has, therefore, shown that issues of citizenship are not incompatible with institution-building and polity-formation “beyond the nation-state.” Yet, the main argument underlines that, say, both no-demos theorists and postnationalists can learn lessons from the careful empirical tracing of concrete practices and a theoretical focus on the interplay between dimensions before concluding on the feasibility or “revolutionary” potential of releasing the idea of citizenship from of nationality. Crucially, the argument of this book does not necessarily fit with normative visions of (European) citizenship. The upshot of this is that while it is perfectly valid to subscribe to a specific view of citizenship on normative grounds, theoretically, one should not employ such a view to abstain from the acknowledgment that elements of citizenship have in fact developed outside the specific normative frame. This goes both for normative theories that oppose European citizenship on the ground that citizenship, participation, and national identity are unequivocally linked for the good of the community of citizens, and for theories that claim that citizenship above the nation-state is desirable because it relinquishes such nationally oriented links. There should, therefore, be a closer link between research questions and the subsequent research design within studies, not only of European citizenship, but citizenship in general. Given the highly contested character of citizenship, both in theoretical and normative terms, it is of crucial importance not to establish empirical research programs on (normative) theories that do not take this into account. Rather, in order to flesh out the traits of conceptions and institutions with regard to citizenship, the employment of a framework that can illuminate specific practices is clearly rewarding. This does not mean that the normative dimension of citizenship is not important. The problem occurs when efforts to understand “what has happened” are based on ideas of “what it should be.” For instance, work in diverse streams of research, such as claiming that it is conceptually impossible as “citizenship” (Shore 2004), a harbinger of a cosmopolitan political order (Linklater 1998a; 1998c), or the cornerstone of a European identity (Kostakopoulou 2001), all overstated specific empirical elements of European citizenship from the vantage point of normative theories or projects. This book has, therefore, underscored the merit of grounding empirical research—and this is especially the case within the study of the EU that is a politically contested phenomenon in itself—on indicators that can illuminate the specifics of political phenomena and not only their putative “fit” with a given normative vision.
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The empirical analysis of this book has highlighted that citizenship is not a concept where different elements are statically linked to each other, that is, they exist in a clearly defined and fixed relationship where, for instance, one element always necessarily precedes or presupposes other elements. This is especially important in unsettled polities where citizenship might be a source of constant struggle between supporters of different polity visions. In the EU, this has been manifested in debates between intergovernmentalists and federalists who hold strongly opposing views on the telos and possibilities of integration. This tension is built into the very fabric of transnational citizenship as it simultaneously exhibits traits that fit both polity visions. Moreover, empirically the book has found that as conceptions of citizenship initially emerged around specific types of rights linked to the internal market and economic integration, other dimensions, such as participation, membership, and identity, often developed as a knock-on effect of how these rights were framed and appropriated against specific goals of integration. The overall point here is that, in order to understand a malleable and contested concept such as citizenship, one should employ a theoretical and analytical framework that is conducive to the discovery of specific realizations of the concept in concrete practices. The more rigid and theoretically predetermined the analytical framework, the less variation in discursive terms can be accounted for. A focus, say, only on rights or identity respectively, will then not contribute to shed light on the detailed and particular developments regarding a novel phenomenon such as European citizenship. This book has, therefore, focused on citizenship as a continuous discursive practice. As such, it has highlighted how citizenship was not an explicit political “idea” that was suddenly introduced in the EU in the 1970s and gained momentum only with the Maastricht Treaty. Based on a general theory of citizenship, I have studied a fraction of EU politics by eschewing the ex ante assumption that it is a unique phenomenon requiring distinctive theoretical models (see e.g. Friese and Wagner 2002). In fact, the theoretical critique that the book was based on and the methodological lessons that were highlighted in the preceding section show that by employing this kind of framework, one could reach a more informed ex post understanding of the specific ways in which European citizenship has been constructed and conceptualized. Indeed, it has highlighted the peculiar configuration and “realworld” practice of a key concept of modern politics within the EU. These remarks highlight how an approach that treats the EU as a political unit
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with binding institutions, policies, and ties to citizens can indeed yield empirical findings that underscore the common observation that it has certain unique features. In terms of linking this to a broader debate on how European integration “writ large” has evolved, the results that stem from this book have underlined that initial conceptions created a specific “path dependence” (see Pierson 1998). In addition to the shift toward a “normal science” of EU studies (Pollack 2005: 358), there has been a proliferation of work in the field from the vantage point of political theory and political philosophy, the so-called “normative turn” (see e.g. Bellamy and Castiglione 2003; Chryssochoou 2001; Friese and Wagner 2002). One strand within the political theory literature in EU studies has focused on the potential for European citizenship to rectify the purported “democratic deficit” of the EU.6 For instance, Beetham and Lord (1998: 32, 58) argue that identity formation and shared civic values will require the democratization of the EU. Others hold that by safeguarding individual citizenship rights based, not on a prepolitical cultural identity, but universal values, the first stones of (deliberative) democracy have been laid down in the EU (Eriksen 2000; Gerstenberg 2001; Habermas 1992; 1996; 1998). Dobson (2007) claims that the only way forward for European citizenship is to turn truly supranational by forging a genuine democratic community of citizens built on individual rights. Conversely, de Beus (2001) argues that a “quasi-national” European identity based on citizenship rights and participation is necessary for democracy to prosper in the EU. Yet another normative argument is found in Føllesdal (2001) who makes the case that the development of citizenship rights in the EU is justified in so far as they foster and maintain the trust required for democratic institutions on the supranational level. A final example here is Kostakopoulou’s (2008) thought-provoking ideas on how European citizenship can and should be a stepping stone toward more inclusive forms of “anational” citizenship. Writing from different normative angles, then, these are examples of the normative argument that European citizenship as it emerged from the Maastricht Treaty is to some extent a prerequisite for the proper democratization of the EU. In light of such arguments, the lack of serious discussion regarding the issue of democracy in this book should be discussed. This was not a conscious theoretical, analytical or normative choice. In laying out the theory of citizenship in the Introduction, issues pertaining to democratic politics clearly figured. It was, for instance, pointed out that political participation and membership decisions can hardly be understood without
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also taking into account their democratic significance. But, in the empirical analyses, issues of democracy seldom came up with the exception of elevated assertions in preambles and declaratory statements, in addition to instituting certain political rights. Transnational European citizenship was not geared to any significant extent toward solving the twin deficits of legitimacy and democracy as is so often asserted, not only in statements by Europoliticians, but also by academics. Before we address normative solutions to such perceived problems, EU studies would do well to probe in more detail the concrete developments regarding concepts and institutions that are linked to the issue of democratic legitimacy. Normative theorizing is not faulty in itself. Such reasoning can develop interesting conjectures about the direction in which the EU will or should develop in the future. Yet, I contend, the analysis of this book and some other empirically oriented studies on European citizenship such as Wiener’s (1998) institutionally oriented study, Maas’ (2007) focus on the ideas of national actors, and Bellamy and colleagues’ (2006) concentration on the active role of individual citizens and organizations, underscore the point made by Bauböck (2007) that normative theories will often be richer if they start off from empirical assessments of “realworld” phenomena. Transnational citizenship is one such “real-world” phenomenon that will remain on the agenda for the foreseeable future. I have contributed in part to a better understanding of transnationality and citizenship in the EU. But as the EU currently encounters numerous crises and the rate of economic, political, and social development spins ever faster, there is still room for enhancing our knowledge about citizenship at the juncture between national, regional, and supranational political institutions.
Conclusion European citizenship discourse is a long-drawn and on-going saga of radical ideas, institutional resilience, and partial reconfiguration of membership, rights, participation, and identity. Citizenship is a fundamental concept and institution in modern politics. It is, therefore, also essentially contested to use Connolly’s (1983) phrase. “Objective” definitions of citizenship are prone to fail, as the intellectual endeavor of understanding its basic building blocks are often intertwined with political ideas and projects. The unmistakable political aspect to citizenship often leads to its reification in intellectual terms. The instantiation of
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citizenship practice in a given modality of time and space, say the nationstate of the twentieth century, is too often taken as a given in definitional terms. This chapter has highlighted how the discursive developments of European citizenship cannot be pinpointed to one model of citizenship but rather stand in constant tension between different ideas, projects, and practices. The narrative of this book reflects, then, the never-ending search for the meaning of citizenship in a time where nation-states are no longer the only entities that bestow rights on individuals and the world is increasingly marked by transnational flows, interlinkages, and institutions. Citizenship in Europe is well understood by the concept “transnational.” The empirical chapters of this book highlight how transnational European citizenship has been “locked in” conceptually. This has consequences, not only for our empirical assessments, but also for the theoretical debate on citizenship in the EU. Citizenship in the EU has always been marked by “trans.” This prefix highlights the in-between character of rights, membership, participation, and identity in the EU. The added distinctiveness of this system of regulating the individual/polity nexus is the unsettled nature of the EU construction. In settled multilevel federal polities, this in-between character is often much more clearly regulated by specified rights and duties linked to the different levels: constituent units and central government. This organizational issue has always been contentious in EU politics and for that we have a conception of European citizenship that is constantly debated but still remains solid in certain of its key properties. While this chapter has not addressed the possible ideational or interestbased reasons for this relative inertia, it may be that the unsettled polity issue has prompted national and European actors to “stay in line,” so to say, in order to prevent uncertainty over rights and their application for European citizens. It remains to be seen, then, whether European citizenship will radically change in the coming years, as crisis and popular dissent looms over European institutions and political leaders.
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Conclusions, Questions, and Challenges
In this final chapter, I summarize the book’s main findings and arguments, discuss certain unanswered issues and prospects for further research, and finally flesh out some conjectures on the future development of European citizenship.
The Argument Summarized Citizenship in the EU is simultaneously constructed upon rights derived from the idea of free movement and border-crossing, and on nationality as its main building block. From the founding treaties to the most recent efforts of constitution-making a “right to have rights” in second countries of the EU has remained at the core of European citizenship. Despite the existence of European-level voting rights in elections to the EP, the supranational dimension of direct relations between the individual and political institutions at the EU level is much weaker than in analogous relations of nation-state citizenship. Transnational citizenship rights in the EU facilitate cross-border relations between citizens of the member states, but do “very little to create a distinctive attachment to the EU itself” (Bellamy 2008: 598). Citizenship in the EU is, then, not so much linked to the European level. It is more of a special rights status that is activated as a consequence of using free movement. This book has, therefore, shown how European citizenship and its trajectory is thoroughly linked to the foundational principles of the EU and the subsequent development in policies that have an effect on rights, membership, participation, and identity politics. The importance of this conclusion should not be underestimated. It highlights how citizenship in the EU cannot be easily pinned down to specific political ideas of integration or to normative visions of citizenship in our globalized age. I have shown how European citizenship developed discursively in concurrence with changing policies, practices, and broader notions of the EU’s self-understanding. Citizenship was not created “out of the blue” as a legitimacy generator in the beginning of
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the 1990s. It is, therefore, not difficult to agree with the following: “right from the beginning, member states have always hesitated or looked for a compromise between four conceptions of citizenship: to assert a common identity, and/or a single values system; to create specific rights for the citizen as producer; to extend rights to the citizen as a consumer; or to assert a more political citizenship, thus recognizing at last the new democratic legitimacy created by the Union” (Neveu 2000: 123).1 In the process tracing of European citizenship, I articulated this complexity of citizenship discourse through an added focus on alternative conceptions and reform proposals. Such proposals were on the whole thrown overboard in the final stages of policy-making or writing citizenship into a constitutional document. The counterfactual of cosmopolitan and postnational reform ideas highlighted, then, the alternative paths that European citizenship could have taken at critical junctures of the integration process. As such, this crystallized the entrenched character of transnational citizenship that has become the main finding and argument of the book. Despite the widening and deepening of European integration, I have highlighted the specific conceptual “lock-in” of the individual scope and institutional form of citizenship in the EU. Incipient conceptions of citizenship in the founding treaties created a conceptual space that had an effect on the explicit citizenship discourse, which emerged from the 1970s, and culminated in the debates on citizenship after the Maastricht Treaty. In this sense, free movement rights and the nationality principle have, therefore, remained “sticky” as the basic dimensions upon which different conceptions of citizenship were conceived throughout the integration process. The developmental trajectory of European citizenship has proven difficult to alter or reverse. This is in line with path dependence arguments on institutional development that highlight that “[o]nce a particular path gets established . . . self-reinforcing processes are prone to consolidation or institutionalization” (Pierson 2004: 51). This last point, then, brings forward a second, general insight that comes out of this book, namely that, European citizenship discourse has not produced a postnational membership on a par, so to say, with this predominantly transnational rights status. European citizenship has been and still is—with the exception of some scattered proposals within constitution-making—grounded on an increasingly salient nationality principle, which culminated in its insertion as a “supplementary” status in the Treaty of Amsterdam. There has been no real dissociation between nationality and the concept of citizenship in the context of European integration.
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Through the addition of new and the widening of the scope of previously instituted rights, conceptions of citizenship were in fact increasingly rooted in prior national membership on the individual level. With these findings and arguments in mind, surprising issues follow. The widespread belief that Europeanization of citizenship will lead to some form of “erosion” of its national and statist modality seem to be unfounded.2 European citizenship discourse has in a sense reinforced the link between citizenship and nationality, in terms of the primary and ultimate access to rights. What was new with the emergence of citizenship under the guise of European integration, however, was that this transpired on a different level than that of the nation-state. To put it directly, the national import of citizenship was strengthened, albeit paradoxically through the added supranational layer of granting rights to individual citizens. This was so, because the transnational rights status diminished the import of nationality within certain European countries through privileging certain denizens on their territories, while at the same time grounding such a status on nationality for citizens of states belonging to the supranational level. This externally exclusionary European citizenship is then without a doubt based on nationality, and not on, say, a cosmopolitan notion of “universal” personhood. The lack of a strong postnational component within the European citizenship discourse is further striking in terms of identity. The continued presence of the nationality principle did not give rise to an explicit identity agenda. European identity has for the most part been linked to an idea of the external identity of the polity itself in relation to other international organizations and countries. The explicit issue of what holds the community of citizens together internally in the EU has hardly been addressed in citizenship debates. It was rather framed implicitly as a corollary to developments regarding other elements, such as rights and participation. As shown above, these developments did, however, not create a free-standing European citizenship independent of the nation-state level. It was rather linked to the privileging of European citizens in second countries. In this sense, identity as a precursor to the institutionalization of citizenship through norms of membership remained an issue for each nation-state—as was argued in the Danish position on Union citizenship—and European citizenship was at the core a truly individual, boundary-crossing rights status, much more than a common signifier for the belonging of citizens to European institutions. This is important to highlight yet again, as the hopes pinned to foundational issues and constitution-making in the recent history of Europe have
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backfired. Clearly, the aspiration of explicit constitution-making—at least in the Spinelli Project and the Convention—was to “transcend” regular policy-making processes in debating the basic constitutional and institutional principles for a European polity. By highlighting the sequence of how citizenship was debated in such processes—from “radical” proposals to “conservative” answers that followed the conceptual path—this book has illuminated an important aspect of European citizenship discourse and EU constitutional politics. When a concept like citizenship was at stake, the common distinctions between normal and constitutional politics derived from the nation-state experience collapsed. EU constitutionmaking did not cause significant ruptures to existing discursive frames that had developed in policy practices, but rather took these as the frame for “constitutional” conceptions of citizenship. In this light, the decisive constitutional moments as far as citizenship is concerned appeared in the founding treaties, rather than within concrete and more or less deliberate instances of “higher law-making.” Later changes to conceptions of citizenship were in a way gradual changes and expansions of this initial framework. This is interesting in itself, as it highlights that with regard to citizenship, moving such a foundational issue to the level of constitution-making did not yield new answers to old problems. Hence, by looking both at “everyday” policy-making and “exceptional” constitution-making, I have shed light not only on European citizenship discourse, but also on the broader question regarding the effects of constitutional reform in the EU. Further research, focusing on other concepts and issue areas, will of course be needed in order to substantiate the extent to which this is particular to the issue of citizenship, or if it is a more general attribute of constitutional development in the EU.
Unanswered Issues and Prospects for Future Research With the main lessons that have been raised in this chapter as a background, what are the foreseeable prospects for future research, specifically with regard to the issue of citizenship and the EU, but also more generally with regard to other levels, be it regional, national, or even of cosmopolitan citizenship? The focus on conceptual and discursive aspects of European citizenship was a conscious choice in this book, as much previous research field had focused on minute legal details or normative ideas. Based on this discursive narrative one could ask the further
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question of how and to what extent the concept of citizenship has been utilized in institutional struggles within the EU, be it between European institutions, member states, or between actors on these two levels of the European political order. I have “scratched the surface” and provided a reexamination of citizenship developments over time. The outcome of this line of reasoning is the strong argument on transnational citizenship in the EU. What is left unanswered, however, is the in-depth actor orientations on issues regarding citizenship at key discursive moments. Such a research focus would thus open up the study of a contested concept such as citizenship to more actor-oriented approaches than one normally encounters within political theory. Indeed, such an actor-focus could be developed against the background of citizenship practice in strict policy- or constitutionmaking terms, and thus provide a further contextualization of important questions and issues such as transparency, accountability, democracy, and legitimacy: issues that have been addressed as part of the “normative turn” of EU studies. This might further enhance our insights regarding the degree to which the focus on such issues stems from a benevolent agenda regarding the “goodness” of the European political order, or are rather used instrumentally to foster interests of the actors in question; and finally the degree to which they in fact have been beneficial to solving perceived problems of the European polity.3 I have moreover emphasized that there was no “revolutionary” impact of constitution-making on conceptions of citizenship in the EU. This contradicts the truism within the constitution-making literature that such processes are bound to diverge from “normal politics” as they address profound issues linked to the future and finality of the polity, and crystallize in a deep constitutional moment. Thus, there is indeed a prospect for studies that focus on a significant issue or concept, and how this is conceptualized and reconciled on different levels of the system. Starting out from the widespread understanding of the EU as a multilevel political system (see Hooghe and Marks 2001), one could add more layers to the empirical argument, and thus come up with a richer research agenda with regard to how political concepts and policy issues are dealt with on different levels of European integration and how this in the end influences rule- and decision-making in the EU. To be more concrete with regard to European citizenship, a multilevel analysis of citizenship in the European setting could study the linkages and interactions between the member state and EU levels in in-depth case studies. Hence, we could gain insights not only into the
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degree to which national citizenship institutions are Europeanized, but also the extent to which conceptions on the national and subnational levels relate to and affect conceptions that emerge on the supranational level. What, if any, is the impact of recent reform trends in nationality laws on European citizenship? These are interesting queries because the nationality principle was strengthened through Union citizenship and post-Maastricht developments. Thus, one could probe the degree to which ideas and interests of the member states have an import, not only for, say, economic or foreign policy issues, but also for the ultimate “container” of the boundaries between states with regard to individuals, namely, citizenship. Further, one ought also to probe the multinational character of citizenship—as a status of reciprocity between nationals of the member states—and how this might affect further institution-building in the European polity and could potentially frame future identity debates between citizens. Not only the conceptual focus and empirical design of the book point to future avenues for research that can enrich our understanding of (European) citizenship. “European” is here put in brackets because the main conclusions link to possible further investigations, not only on the European level, but also on other levels. Indeed, my main argument could be used as a heuristic starting point for closer scrutinizing of the extent to which the proliferation of denizenship on the national level (see Hammar 1990) from the 1970s onwards in fact contributed to a “postnationalization” of membership and rights in so-called receiving states with regard to migration (see Soysal 1994). Hence, one can study more closely in empirical terms whether the institution of citizenship has in fact been changed drastically on the national level, or whether it has rather been reconfigured in the sense that certain elements remain “nationalized” while others are “let loose” from the nation-state. These remarks also open up for a comparative approach to the study of citizenship across levels of government. Even though there are increasing calls for overcoming the sui generis approach to the study of the EU, the contextualization of the EU as a “case” has often been done implicitly in comparative terms (Fossum 2006: 96). The general theory of citizenship that has been utilized in this book in terms of focusing on elements is especially conducive to comparative research strategies. One could, for instance, conduct a comparative study on conceptions of citizenship between the European and nation-state levels. In doing this, one could assess more systematically the extent to which European
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citizenship as one facet of European integration does in fact diverge from its main frame of reference, that of citizenship within the nationstate template. Thus, based on the broad theoretical lessons and the link to the field of EU studies, the work done in this book opens up the further possibility of more systematic empirical research in a field permeated by theoretical conventions and dominant ideas in practice (see Isin 2002). The possibilities for future research that I have sketched here underline that I have focused on just one facet of the range of possibilities with regard to research on European citizenship. Yet, the underlying idea of this book was that through a reasoned theoretical framework one could, in general terms, capture more of the complexity concerning the development of citizenship in the EU as the most elaborate form of political order “beyond the nation-state.” In light of this, the main findings and conclusions can serve as a reminder that citizenship—notwithstanding its ideational and normative core—should be scrutinized empirically like any important aspect of modern political order. Only through theoretically informed empirical research can we make appropriate sense of the issues that are at stake in a period of rapid change and widespread transformation of political order, be it on the national, European, or global level—or just as importantly, at the junctures between them.
The Future of European Citizenship Political scientists are routinely ridiculed for their lack of predictive accuracy and power. Why did they, for instance, not foresee the end of the Cold War? Or the recent financial crisis for that matter? Despite such admonitions, I will still make some future conjectures on the way forward for European citizenship. In Chapter 8, I highlighted the current struggles in European institutions to contain the economic bust of recent years. It is not unlikely that this will be the major source of struggle and debate over European citizenship in the coming years. As such, it may proffer a shift in citizenship discourse from the conceptualization of citizenship in itself to its linkage to the effects of broader trends in European integration. The discursive backdrop of tension between intergovernmental and supranational visions of the EU polity that has been highlighted in this book
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might no longer be as important. Rather, the meaning of citizenship is likely to come increasingly into play as member states seek to find short-term solutions to shifting problems. It is not the vision that will matter, but rather the “everyday” management of policies that will be at the forefront. The Danish suspension of free movement in the Schengen Agreement is a case in point. While the legality of this move is uncertain at the time of writing, such symbolic acts of renationalizing control over borders and political communities are not unlikely to occur more often in the future. European citizenship became an explicit agenda of European institutions in a time of optimism after the end of the Cold War; in the coming years it might turn into a scapegoat when the tide has turned and Europe goes from crisis to crisis. At the same time, some European institutions continue in their relentless search for the “meaning” of European integration qua legal principles and political possibilities. Nationalizing traits of member state policies are in this sense at odds with the cosmopolitan outlook of, say, the ECJ. While political elites have been busy with handling financial problems and institutional issues after the failure of the Constitutional Treaty, Europe’s legal elite has silently pushed the integrationist agenda. I use “integrationist” here in the meaning that the Treaty and foundational principles of the EU can be interpreted either narrowly or widely. The ECJ has chosen the “wide” integrationist road in recent case law on European citizenship. The Euro might be under heavy economic and political attack, and popular dissatisfaction at a high after failed attempts at “big reform” in the last decade; the ECJ moves forward nevertheless. At the current crossroads, politics and law seem more at odds than ever before in European integration. As politicians and populations lose confidence in the European project it is not unlikely that the “judicialization” of integration will nevertheless continue. This will be especially important for the development of European citizenship as policy-makers have their mind elsewhere. It is, however, not to be expected that this will be a benign opposition in European politics. As mentioned earlier, member states might increasingly choose to counter supranational solutions and transnational principles for symbolic and domestic reasons. The foundational principles of integration that are so important for European citizenship have attained a near constitutional status. It remains to be seen, then, whether such principles and their institutional defenders can withstand attacks from the force of renationalization and the power games of European crisis politics.
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Transnational Citizenship in the European Union
The transnational core of European citizenship presupposes a modicum of solidarity between member states and their respective citizenries. This solidarity goes beyond membership in the political community of a member state. This is indeed the core transnationality of citizenship in the EU: you get access to rights and benefits in other countries by virtue of your European status. Membership of the political community as defined by territoriality or nationality is no longer necessary to be granted civil, social, and even political rights. The states and their populations that are on the “receiving end” of this mobility space must accept this and follow European regulations even where this might go against national interests or traditions. European citizens who move to another country within the EU should not be discriminated. But is this solidarity strong enough to sustain further inroads to the value of exclusive political membership and citizenship in European welfare states? Are elites and peoples alike willing to retain the core of solidarity in the European project? Has the “cosmopolitanism” of rights attribution gone too far with the recent cases from the ECJ? As welfare states face structural problems for the foreseeable future, it is not unlikely that this will become a new battleground of European integration in general and citizenship politics more specifically. Member states might try to circumvent their obligations to European citizens paving the way for a situation where it is again only the Eurostars4 and vagabonds that can really benefit from transnational citizenship in the EU. This attempt to lay out some future prospects for European citizenship does come with a certain “pessimistic” flavor. European citizenship was for a long time the object of optimism. For many it epitomized the inherent force of unification in postwar Europe. “Citizenship” was the nation-state idea and institution. In the EU, it could viably be forged as a meaningful container of a specific set of rights, norms of membership, modes of participation, and identity aspirations outside that very frame. The EU was enough of a “polity” to sustain citizenship and its legal, political, and cultural implications. Now it seems that European citizenship may enter rough waters. It is unclear how current crises will pan out for citizenship politics in the future; a first indication is the Danish suspension of free movement in the Schengen Agreement. It is nevertheless hard to foresee that European citizenship will be fundamentally challenged in the future. It is strongly woven into the very fabric of European integration. Popular dissent vis-à-vis the integration project may be on the rise, but the Treaty stands and transnational rights
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have come to stay. As such, European citizenship remains a solid institution on shaky ground; it is a legal, political, and identity marker for the role of individuals in the EU polity. What seems sure though is that while European citizenship is “alive and kicking,” it is unlikely to continue as an object of utopian ideas regarding European identity, postnational projects, and cosmopolitan futures. It might become less important, then, as a professed vehicle and symbol for democratization, and ever more important as a rights generator for EU citizens.
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Notes
Introduction 1
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I use the term “European citizenship” consistently throughout the book. “Citizenship of the Union” or “Union citizenship” is used more narrowly in terms of the explicit citizenship status of the Treaty on European Union. European citizenship thus covers a more general range of citizenship issues. For a succinct analysis of political identity in Europe along the same lines, see Castiglione (2009). In his book on transnationalism and citizenship, Bauböck (1994: vii) argues similarly in claiming that “[a] comprehensive analysis of citizenship has to take into account three different aspects: (1) the rights and obligations attributed to citizens as members of the polity, (2) the determination of individual membership, and (3) the nature and shape of the polity itself.” In general terms, the concept of transnationalism denotes that institutions, policies, groups or individuals cut across the cleavages between different nation-state territories as these have been constituted through the international political system (see Bauböck 1994; Faist 2000; Fox 2005). Helmuth Kohl (1991), Erklärung der Bundesregierung zu den Ergebnissen des Europäischen Rates in Maastricht, in Verhandlungen des deutschen Bundestages. 12. Wahlperiode. 68. Sitzung vom. Dezember 13, 1991; Francois Mitterand and Helmuth Kohl (1990), Gemeinsame Botschaft von François Mitterrand und Helmut Kohl (Paris, Dezember 6, 1990), in Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung, Dezember 11, 1990; Habermas (1992), Schmitter (2000). There is some evidence that this holds true for certain policy areas, often those with high need for specialized expertise (Joerges and Neyer 1997). Much of this literature is labeled under the heading of historical institutionalism. I use the vocabulary of path dependency, critical junctures, and branching patterns heuristically in this book. This means specifically that I, in contrast to the rational actor model of much historical-institutionalist research, focus on their utility in understanding and clarifying the discursive and conceptual development of European citizenship.
Chapter 1 1
A phrase often used about the six founding members of the institutions of European integration: Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, France, and Germany.
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Notwithstanding the clearly federal aspirations of many pro-integrationists in the immediate postwar period, including calls from the Movimento Federalista Europeo for the creation of a European “continental” citizenship coexistent with national citizenship (Maas 2005b: 988). For broader historical accounts, see Dinan (2004), Gillingham (2003), Griffiths (2000). For personal accounts, see Nelsen and Stubb (2003). ECSC Treaty, Articles 3c, 3e, 4b, 46, 56, 69. ECSC Treaty, in the title of chapter VIII: “Wages and Movement of Labor.” The notable exception is Maas (2007). My emphasis. Treaty of Rome, Articles 3, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 92, 117, 119, 123, 220. Article 7 further stipulated that the principle of nondiscrimination must fall “[w]ithin the field of application of this Treaty and without prejudice to the special provisions mentioned therein.” A narrow interpretation of this could be that as the treaty was geared toward economic integration and facilitating a common market, the principle would only apply to individuals as they engaged within spheres falling under these specific aspects of European integration. It can, however, also be interpreted as a more fundamental individual right under European law stipulating a beginning shift from nationality to individuality in ascertaining the worth of citizens and their relationships to collective units, be it firms or states (see Menéndez 2002). Treaty of Rome, Article 48. Within the literature on European integration, the judicial activism of the ECJ is often put forward as one of the main factors in the development of the EU as more than an international organization—as an integrative project with statelike features, but still not a state in its own right (for historical appraisals, see e.g. Dinan 2004; Gillingham 2003; for legal-political appraisals, see e.g. Alter 1998; MacCormick 1999; Stein 1981; Weiler 1999). Case 6/64 Costa v. ENEL [1964], ECR 585. Case C-26/62 Van Gend en Loos v. Nederlandse Adminstratie der Belastingen [1963], ECR 1. This was highlighted in Van Gend en Loos: “The objective of the EEC Treaty, which is to establish a common market, the functioning of which is of direct concern to interested parties in the Community, implies that this Treaty is more than an agreement which merely creates mutual obligations between the contracting parties. This view is confirmed by the Preamble to the Treaty which refers not only to governments but to peoples. It is also confirmed more specifically by the establishment of institutions endowed with sovereign rights, the exercise of which affects Member States and also their citizens. Furthermore it must be noted that the nationals of the states brought together in the Community are called upon to cooperate in the functioning of this Community through the intermediary of the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee.” The analysis in this section has focused on the following legislative acts: Regulation (EEC) no. 38/64 on freedom of movement for workers within the Community, OJ 62, April 17, 1964; Regulation (EEC) no. 1612/68 of the Council of 15 October 1968 on freedom of movement for workers within the Community, OJ L 257, October 19, 1968; Regulation (EEC) no. 1251/70 of
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the Commission of 29 June 1970 on the right of workers to remain in the territory of a member state after having been employed in that state, OJ L 142, June 30, 1970; Regulation (EEC) no. 1408/71 of the Council of 14 June 1971 on the application of social security schemes to employed persons and their families moving within the Community, OJ L 149, July 5, 1971. Seventh General Report on the Activities of the Community, European Commission, June 1964, pp. 48–9.
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In fact it was not yet formally enlarged. Denmark, Great Britain, and Ireland had through varying procedures decided to join the Community from January 1973. The three acceding countries were nevertheless invited to take part in the subsequent summit. Thus, the “Six” became “Nine.” Declaration of the Heads of Governments, Bull. EC 10-1972, p. 15. Ibid., fn. 13. Ibid., fn. 13, pp. 16, 23. Ibid., fn. 13, p. 16. Declaration on the European Identity, Bull. EC 12-1973, pp. 118–22. For a theoretical discussion and subsequent empirical appraisal regarding identity discourses on “the Other” and “Otherness” in international relations, see Neumann (1999). Declaration of the Heads of Governments, Bull. EC 12-1974. My emphases. A Passport Union, Bull. EC, Supplement 7/75. My emphasis. Case 48/75, Royer [1976], ECR 497. The Granting of Special Rights, Bull. EC, Supplement 5/75. Declaration of the Heads of Governments, Bull. EC 12-1974, point 11. The Assembly decided on March 30, 1962 to change its name to the European Parliament (see Judge and Earnshaw 2003: 36). Accordingly, I will in the following use the acronym EP when referring to the European Parliament. ECSC Treaty, Article 21(1); Treaty of Rome, Article 138(3). European Parliament, Résolution portent d’adoption d’un projet de convention sur l’élection de l’Assemblée parlamentaire européenne au suffrage universel direct, OJ C 384/60, June 2, 1960. Final Communiqué of the meeting of Heads of State, The Hague, December 1 and 2, 1969, Bull. EC 1-1970. European Parliament, Report on the adoption of a Draft Convention introducing elections to the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage, Doc. 368/74, January 13, 1974. European Parliament, Résolution, p. 837. European Assembly, Relazione sulla elezione dell’Assemblea Parlamentaro Europea a suffragio universale diretto, Doc. 22/60, April 30, 1960. Resolution of the European Parliament on the adoption of a Draft Convention introducing elections to the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage, OJ C 32, February 11, 1975.
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Act concerning the election of the representatives of the Assembly by direct universal suffrage, OJ L 278/1, 8 October 1976. As in fact did the conclusions of the European Council in Rome, December 1–2, 1975, where it was decided that the Community should pursue the aim of direct elections of the EP, see Bull. EC 11-1975. See, for instance, Tenth General Report on the Activities of the Communities, European Commission, 1976, pp. 23–4. This was the case until the passing of two directives: Council Directive 93/109/ EC laying down detailed arrangements for the exercise of the right to vote and stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament for citizens of the Union residing in a member state of which they are not nationals, OJ L329/34; Council Directive 94/80/EC laying down detailed arrangements for the exercise of the right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal elections by citizens of the Union residing in a member state of which they are not nationals, OJ L 368/38. Further, the very electoral systems are still at the core of the EP elections as the much-sought “uniform procedure” has not yet been agreed upon by the member states. They have thus often been characterized as so-called “second-order” elections (Reif and Schmitt 1980). On the notion of “multiple demoi,” see Weiler (1999). European Union, Bull. EC, Supplement 1/76.
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For a historically informed analysis regarding the development of the institutional and legislative powers of the EP, see Rittberger (2005). The group took its name after the restaurant in Strasbourg where it first met in July 1980 (Capotorti et al. 1986: 11). Indeed, the efforts to forge a European Political Community (EPC) in the 1950s had some constitution-making traits (Eriksen et al. 2004: 8). But, clearly the work on the European Political Community did not purport to be about writing a constitution for Europe, but rather to enact a more comprehensive political union than the then existing community within the restricted sectors of coal and steel (Griffiths 2000). Brief vom Altiero Spinelli an seine Kollegen in Europäischen Parlament, June 25, 1980, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Motion for a resolution on the setting up of an ad hoc committee to draw up proposals concerning the progress and development of the Community, EP Working Documents, Doc. 1-889/80. See, for example, Crocodile—Letter to members of the European Parliament, no. 3 (January 1981), no. 5 (June 1981), and no. 7 (December 1981), Historical Archives, European University Institute. Crocodile, no. 5. Ibid., 7. Ibid. Working Report no. 1 for the Crocodile Club, Historical Archives, European University Institute.
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Cited in Crocodile—Letter to members of the European Parliament, no. 6 (September 1981), Historical Archives, European University Institute. Ibid. In fact, in Crocodile, no. 5, these examples (except for Norway) were brought forward as comparable cases of constitution-making to that of the Spinelli Project. Surely, in hindsight this seems overtly lofty, but still it does tell us something significant about an unprecedented phenomenon within an EC which only 30 years earlier had been established through integration and cooperation within two narrowly defined sectors of production and commerce. Minutes, Committee on Institutional Affairs (January 27–28, 1982), Historical Archives, European University Institute (in Italian as Processo Verbale). Committee on Institutional Affairs, Documento di lavoro sugli orientamento del Parlamento europeo per la riforma dei Trattati, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Committee on Institutional Affairs, Draft report on the guidelines for the European Parliament concerning the reform of the treaties, March 3, 1982, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Committee on Institutional Affairs, Motion for a resolution on the European Parliament’s position concerning the reform of the treaties and the achievement of European Union, March 22, 1982, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Minutes (Processo Verbale), Committee on Institutional Affairs, meetings April 28–29, 1982 and May 24–26, 1982, Historical Archives, European University Institute. European Parliament, Doc. 1-305/82/A, Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee on Institutional Affairs on the European Parliament’s position concerning the reform of the treaties and the achievement of European Union. Motion for a resolution, June 21, 1982. European Parliament, Doc. 1-305/82/B, Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee on Institutional Affairs on the European Parliament’s position concerning the reform of the treaties and the achievement of European Union. Explanatory statement, June 21, 1982. European Parliament, Doc. 1-305/82/A, p. 9. Resolution on the European Parliament’s position on the reform of the treaties and the achievement of European Union, July 6, 1982, OJ C 238, September 13, 1982. Minutes (Processo Verbale), Committee on Institutional Affairs, November 2–4, 1982, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Minutes (Processo Verbale), Committee on Institutional Affairs, December 1–3, 1982, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Minutes (Processo Verbale), Committee on Institutional Affairs, January 25–27, 1983, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Committee on Institutional Affairs, Motion for a resolution concerning the substance of the draft Treaty establishing the European Union, April 26, 1983, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Of course, as was shown in the preceding chapter, at this juncture in European integration, a political aspect of citizenship had emerged also in policy-making.
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But, the enduring “legacy” of conceptions of citizenship until the mid-1980s was unequivocally one where a market-oriented citizenship prevailed over other conceptions. European Parliament, Doc. 1-575/83/B, Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee on Institutional Affairs concerning the substance of the preliminary draft Treaty establishing the European Union. Explanatory statement. European Parliament, Doc. 1-575/83/C, Report drawn up on behalf of the Committee on Institutional Affairs concerning the substance of the preliminary draft Treaty establishing the European Union, preparatory documents. European Parliament, Doc. 1-575/83/B, p. 5. European Parliament, Doc. 1-575/83/C, pp. 5–18. Ibid., p. 19. Ibid., pp. 71–2. Debates of the European Parliament, Report of Proceedings from 12 to 16 September 1983, OJ C 1-303, Annex. European Parliament, Resolution concerning the substance of the preliminary draft Treaty establishing the European Union, OJ C 277/95, October 17, 1983. Ibid., paras 12 and 30. Committee on Institutional Affairs, Progetto di relazione sul progetto preliminare di trattato che istitutisce l’unione europea, November 8, 1983, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union, OJ C 77/33, February 14, 1984.
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European Council, Fontainebleu, June 25–26, 1984, Bull. EC 6-1984, point 1.1.9. See also European Commission, Eighteenth General Report on the Activities of the Communities, 1984, pp. 26–7. A People’s Europe. Reports from the ad hoc Committee, Supplement 7/85, Bull. EC. European Commission, Commission Communication to the Council on A People’s Europe, COM (85) 640 final. Single European Act, OJ L 169, June 29, 1987. Solemn Declaration on European Union, Bull. EC 6-1983, pp. 24–9. “Completing the Internal Market,” White Paper from the Commission to the European Council, COM (85) 310 final. Draft Treaty Establishing the European Union, OJ C 77/33, February 14, 1984. Solemn Declaration, Bull. EC 6-1983, p. 25. It has been argued that one of the most salient and varying changes introduced by the SEA was in fact to partly restore the method of qualified majority voting which had been rendered virtually null and void due to the so-called Luxembourg Compromise in 1966 (see Gillingham 2003: 231). On the struggle of the EP to increase its institutional powers within the institutional nexus of European integration, see Rittberger (2005). On some of the
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elements in EP’s push for a uniform electoral procedure and individual rights, see, for example, sections 5.3.5 and 6.2. Shaw (2007) also refers extensively to the active role of the EP with regard to European elections and voting rights. For the text of the original intergovernmental agreement from 1985 as well as subsequent accessions, and so on, see The Schengen Acquis, OJ L 39, September 22, 2000. The Schengen Agreement was institutionalized as a part of the acquis communautaire as late as the Amsterdam Treaty that entered into force on January 1, 1999. Yet, for the purposes of a diachronic appraisal regarding the conceptual import of citizenship issues within the context of the European integration process, the initial agreement from 1985 (and some subsequent developments attached to it) is mainly dealt with in this section. The Schengen Acquis, “Convention,” Title 1. Council Directive 90/364/EEC on right of residence, OJ L 180, July 13, 1990; Council Directive 90/365/EEC on the right of residence for employees and self-employed persons who have ceased their occupational activity, OJ L 180, July 13, 1990; Council Directive 90/366/EEC on the right of residence for students, OJ L 180, July 13, 1990; Council Directive 93/96/EEC of 29 October 1993 on the right of residence for students. The last directive mentioned here came into force as an annulment of the previous Council Directive 90/366/ EEC after the ECJ had ruled that it did not fulfill the principle of prohibition of any discrimination on the grounds of nationality, in this case with regard to so-called vocational training. Yet, the main thrust of the original directive with regard to matters of free movement and residence, for instance, for dependents on the persons in questions, were retained in Directive 93/96/EEC. For further comments, see Kostakopoulou (2001: 48). All four directives had virtually the same wording in their preambles as well as several substantial articles. The main difference between the directives is in the degree of specificity as to the beneficiaries of the rules laid down in them. I will therefore point out only where the single directive contains specific measures that are not part of the other directives. Otherwise I will treat them as one “body” of legislation. Article 1, Council Directive 90/364/EEC; Article 1, Council Directive 90/365/ EEC; Article 2, Council Directive 90/366/EEC; Article 2, Council Directive 93/96/EEC.
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European Council, Strasbourg, December 8–9, 1989, Conclusions of the Presidency, SN 441/2/89. European Parliament, Resolution on the Intergovernmental Conference in the context of Parliament’s strategy for European Union, OJ C 96/115, April 17, 1990. Ibid., p. 116. See, for instance, Belgian Memorandum, March 19, 1990 and Greek Memorandum—Contribution to the discussions on the progress towards political union, May 15, 1990, both reprinted in F. Laursen and S. Vanhoonacker (eds)
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(1992): The Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union. Institutional Reforms, New Policies and International Identity of the European Community. Maastricht: EIPA. See Agence Europe, Documents, no. 5252, May 11, 1990, p. 3. Greek Memorandum, reprinted in Laursen and Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992), p. 280. European Council, Dublin, June 25–26, 1990, Conclusions of the Presidency, SN 60/1/90. Subjects for reflection submitted to the European Council in Dublin, June 25–26, 1990, Agence Europe, Documents, no. 1628, June 23, 1990, p. 2. European Council, Dublin, June 25–26, 1990, Conclusions of the Presidency, SN 60/1/90, p. 6. European Parliament, Resolution on the Intergovernmental Conference in the context of Parliament’s strategy for European Union, OJ C 231/97, September 17, 1990. European Parliament, Resolution on the European Parliament’s guidelines for a draft constitution for the European Union, Agence Europe, Documents, no. 1639/1640, July 19, 1990. Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Communities, The road to European Citizenship, September 24, 1990, reprinted in Laursen and Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992), pp. 328–32. Ibid., p. 329. Ibid., p. 331. For the most comprehensive theoretical and empirical discussion on the multilevel nexus of political citizenship on the local, national, and European levels to this date, see Shaw (2007). The European Commission, Political Union: Commission opinion of 21 October 1990 on the proposal for amendment of the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community with a view to political union, Intergovernmental Conferences: Contributions by the Commission, Bull. EC, Supplement 2/91, p. 79. European Council, Rome, October 27–28, 1990, Conclusions of the Presidency, SN 304/2/90. European Council, Rome, December 14–15, 1990, Conclusions of the Presidency, Bull. EC 12-1990. In fact, the issue of democratic legitimacy was brought up already before the decision to convene an IGC, through a joint letter to the Irish Presidency from the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the French President Francois Mitterand, reprinted in Laursen and Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992), p. 276. The issue was, however, not taken up again explicitly and in relation to citizenship until the initiation of the negotiating phase. In addition, the following themes were drawn up: a common foreign and security policy, extension and strengthening of Community action and effectiveness, and effectiveness and efficiency of the Union. Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Communities, Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union, European Citizenship, February 21, 1991, reprinted in Laursen and Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992), pp. 325–8. Ibid., p. 325.
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Ibid., p. 327. European Commission, Contributions by the Commission to the Intergovernmental Conference, Union Citizenship, March 30, 1991, Bull. EC, Supplement 2/91. Ibid., Explanatory memorandum, p. 86. European Parliament, Interim Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs on Union Citizenship, May 23, 1991, PE 150.034/fin. Draft Treaty on the Union from the Luxembourg Presidency, June 18, 1991, reprinted in Laursen and Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992), pp. 358–406. European Parliament, Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs on Union Citizenship, November 6, 1991, PE 153.099/fin. Ibid., p. 5. Treaty on Political Union, Final Draft by the Dutch Presidency as modified by the Maastricht Summit, December 13, 1991, Agence Europe, Documents, no. 1750/1751. TEU, Title II, Part Two, Citizenship of the Union, OJ C 191, July 29, 1992. TEU, Final Act, Declaration on nationality of a member state, OJ C 191, July 29, 1992. See European Convention on Nationality, Council of Europe, November 6, 1997. TEU, Title I, Common Provisions, Article B, OJ C 191, July 29, 1992.
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The referendum was held on June 2, 1992 with a voter turnout of 83.1 percent, of which 50.7 percent voted “no” and 49.3 percent voted “yes.” Birmingham European Council, Conclusions of the Presidency, Bull. EC 10-1992, pp. 7–9. Edinburgh European Council, Conclusions of the Presidency, Bull. EC 12-1992, I. Ibid., Annex 1 to Part B. Ibid., Annex 3 to Part B. Finnish Government—Memorandum concerning Finnish points of view with regard to the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union, Helsinki, September 18, 1995. Treaty of Amsterdam, OJ C 340, November 10, 1997. See, for instance, the Opinion of Advocate General Leger on the Boukhalfa case (Case C-214/94 Boukhalfa [1996], ECR, p. I-2253): “[I]t is for the Court to ensure that it’s [Union citizenship] full scope is attained. If all the conclusions in the concept are drawn, every citizen must, whatever his nationality, enjoy exactly the same rights and be subject to the same obligations.” Case C-369/90 Micheletti and Others v. Delegacion del Gobierno en Cantabria [1992], ECR I-4329. De Groot (1998: 123–4) argues that these three principles are relevant here: (1) the obligation of solidarity, (2) the right of free movement, and (3) rules
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regarding the acquisition or loss of nationality cannot violate public international law, especially fundamental rights. Case C-214/94 Boukhalfa v. Federal Republic of Germany [1996], ECR I-2253. Cases C-64 & 65/96 Land Nordrhein-Westfalen v. Uecker and Jacquet [1997], ECR I-3171. Case C-85/96 Martinez Sala v. Freistaat Bayern [1998], ECR I-2691. Case 148/02 Avello v. Etát Belge [2003], ECR I-11613. Cases C-64 & 65/96 Uecker and Jacquet v. Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, para. 23. For a comprehensive discussion on the import of the principle of nondiscrimination in the post-Maastricht case law of the ECJ, see Reich (2005). Avello, para. 1. My emphases. Case C-138/02 Collins v. Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2004], ECR I-02703. Council Directive 2004/38/EC on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the member states, OJ L 158, April 30, 2004. Council Directive 2004/38/EC, point 22 of “preamble.” European Council, Cologne, Conclusions of the Presidency, June 3–4, 1999, Bull. EU, 6-1999. Ibid. Document CONVENT 47, September 14, 2000. Charter on Fundamental Rights of the European Union, OJ C 364/1, December 18, 2000. There were comments on legal, constitutional, and policy traits, see, for example, De Búrca and Aschenbrenner (2003), Eriksen (2003), Eriksen et al. (2003), and Menéndez (2002). Charter, Articles 1–20, 47–50. Charter, Article 21. Charter, Articles 33–36. Charter, Articles 39–46.
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European Council, Laeken Declaration on the future of the European Union, SN 273/01, Laeken, December 15, 2001. The Praesidium directed the work of the Convention and was led by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. CONV 4/02, Speeches delivered at the inaugural meeting of the Convention on 28 February 2002, Brussels, March 5. CONV 7/02, Note on the inaugural meeting—February 28, 2002, Brussels, March 11, p. 3. CONV 14/02, Note on the plenary meeting—Brussels, March 21 and 22, 2002, Brussels, March 25, p. 2. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 3.
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22 23 24
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CONV 40/02, Note on the plenary meeting—Brussels, April 15 and 16, 2002, Brussels, April 25, p. 3. CONV 112/02, Digest of contributions to the forum, Brussels, June 17. For an original and more institutionally oriented interpretation of such a framing of citizenship issues within European integration, see Maas (2007). CONV 167/02, Note on the plenary meeting—Brussels, June 24 and 25, 2002, Brussels, July 4. Ibid., pp. 4, 8. There were working groups within the following areas: subsidiarity, the Charter of Fundamental Rights/European Charter of Human Rights, legal personality, national parliaments, complementary competencies, economic governance, external action, defense, simplification, freedom, security and justice, and social Europe. CONV 354/02, Final report of working group II—Incorporation of the Charter/accession to the ECHR, Brussels, October 22, p. 2. CONV 369/02, Preliminary draft Constitutional Treaty, Brussels, October 28, 2002. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., pp. 9–10. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 15. CONV 378/02, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, October 28 and 29, Brussels, October 31, p. 9. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 13. CONV 400/02, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, November 7 and 8, Brussels, November 13, p. 8. CONV 449/02, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, December 5 and 6, 2002, Brussels, December 13. CONV 477/03, The functioning of the institutions, Brussels, January 10, p. 2. CONV 508/03, Summary report on the plenary session—Brussels, January 20 and 21, 2003, Brussels, January 27, p. 2. Ibid., p. 6. CONV 331/02, Summary report on the plenary session—Brussels, October 3 and 4, 2002, Brussels, October 11, p. 5. CONV 516/1/03/ REV 1, Final report of working group XI on social Europe, Brussels, February 4, p. 2. Ibid., pp. 11–12. CONV 548/03, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, February 6 and 7, 2003, Brussels, October 13. CONV 528/03, Draft of Articles 1 to 16 of the Constitutional Treaty, Brussels, February 6. Ibid., p. 3. CONV 648/03, Title X: Union membership, Brussels, April 2. In a discussion on draft articles considering the Union and its immediate environment, values, such as basic democratic principles, respect for human rights, and the
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53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61
62 63
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rule of law, were suggested by several Convention members as providing the gist of such a relationship, see CONV 696/03, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, April 24 and 25, 2003, Brussels, April 30, 2003, p. 9. CONV 574/1/03 REV 1, Reactions to draft Articles 1 to 16 of the Constitutional Treaty—Analysis, Brussels, February 26, pp. 17–18. CONV 601/03, Summary report on the plenary session—Brussels, February 27 and 28, 2003, Brussels, March 11, p. 5. CONV 574/1/03 REV 1, Reactions to draft Articles 1 to 16, p. 64. CONV 601/03, Summary report on the plenary session, p. 9. Ibid., pp. 1–2. Ibid., p. 1. The schism between what can crudely be called the supranational and intergovernmental positions regarding the impetus for and institutions of the Union was also acknowledged by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the president of the Convention, see CONV 696/03, Summary report of the plenary session, p. 1. CONV 650/03, The democratic life of the Union, Brussels, April 2. Ibid., pp. 2, 5. Ibid., p. 5. CONV 670/03, Summary sheet of the proposal for amendments relating to the democratic life of the Union, Brussels, April 15. Ibid., pp. 3, 12. CONV 696/03, Summary report of the plenary session, p. 5. CONV 644/1/03 REV 1, Summary of proposed amendments regarding the area of freedom, security and justice, Brussels, May 7, 2003, p. 3. CONV 748/03, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, May 15 and 16, 2003, Brussels, May 27, p. 5. Ibid., p. 5. CONV 724/03, Draft Constitution, Volume I—Revised text of Part One, Brussels, May 26; CONV 725/03, Draft Constitution, Volume II—Draft text of Parts Two, Three and Four, Brussels, May 27; CONV 726/03, Draft text of Part II with comments, Brussels, May 26. CONV 724/03, Draft Constitution, Volume I, p. 2. Ibid., pp. 51, 55 and CONV 725/03, Draft Constitution, Volume II, p. 25. CONV 724/03, Draft Constitution, Volume I, pp. 5–6. Ibid., p. 60. CONV 725/03, Draft Constitution, Volume II, pp. 24–5. Ibid., pp. 24–6. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., pp. 66–71. Ibid., pp. 66. See also the declarations in question: Council of Europe, The European Social Charter, 18 October 1961; European Commission, The Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers, European File 6/90, May 1990. CONV 725/03, Draft Constitution, Volume II, pp. 66–7. For more on the “second-order” character of elections to the EP, see Reif and Schmitt (1980). CONV 725/03, Draft Constitution, Volume II, p. 92.
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176 65
66
67 68
69
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72 73
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75 76 77
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See CONV 798/03, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, June 5, 2003, Brussels, June 17. CONV 814/03, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, June 11 and 13, 2003, Brussels, June 19, p. 1. Ibid., p. 3. For two different views that nevertheless share the view that this issue is of import for the discussion on European identity, see Menéndez (2005a) and Weiler (2003). See CONV 847/03, Draft Constitution, Volume II, Brussels, July 9; CONV 849/03, Summary report of the plenary session—Brussels, July 4, 2003, Brussels, July 14; CONV 853/03, Summary report of the plenary session— Brussels, July 9 and 10, 2003, Brussels, July 12. CONV 850/03, Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, Brussels, July 18. Thessaloniki European Council, June 19 and 20, Conclusions of the Presidency, Bull. EC 6-2003. CONV 850/03, Draft Treaty, p. 3. Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, OJ 2004/C 310/01, December 16, 2004. European Commission, A Citizen’s Agenda—Delivering results for Europe, Brussels, COM (2006) 211 final, May 10, 2006. Ibid., p. 2. European Commission, A Citizen’s Agenda, p. 5. This technocratic tendency related to citizenship is reminiscent of the so-called Comitology system of the EU where experts exert considerable power on Union policies within often highly specialized committees, see, for example, Joerges and Vos (1999).
Chapter 8 1
2
3 4
5
6
See, for instance, the postconstitutional effort from the European Commission to reengage European citizens in the integration project: European Commission, A single market for 21st century Europe, COM (2007) 724 final, November 20, 2007. See, for instance, Case C-214/94 Boukhalfa v. Federal Republic of Germany [1996], ECR I-2253; Case C-194/96 Kulzer v. Freistaat Bayern [1998], ECR I-985. See Nic Shuibhne (2002) for a further in-depth analysis of the immediate case law after the Maastricht Treaty. Case C-34/09 Zambrano v. Office national de l’emploi [2011], March 8, 2011. Fox (2005: 177) argues along these lines with regard to differences between transnational citizenship and world, global, or cosmopolitan citizenship. See Wiener (1998) for a similar argument on the “fragmented” character of institutionalized citizenship in the EU after the Maastricht Treaty. For a comprehensive bibliographic overview of seminal contributions in the scholarly debate on democratic legitimacy and citizenship in the EU, see Bellamy and Castiglione (2003).
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Conclusions, Questions, and Challenges 1 2
3
4
My emphasis. This argument is echoed in research on “top-down” Europeanization of domestic immigration policies (Vink 2005) and in a comparison of changes in nationality laws in the “old” member states of the EU (Howard 2009). See, for example, Naurin (2007) who argues that the issue of transparency within the EU has largely been advanced as a type of “normative windowdressing” without the enhancement of the quality of decision-making through “publicizing” the views of individual actors that is so often professed within the literature on deliberation and deliberative democracy. This phrase is taken from Favell’s (2008) book on the new European class that has taken full advantage of the rights to free movement.
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European Parliament, Resolution concerning the substance of the preliminary draft Treaty establishing the European Union, OJ C 277/95, October 17, 1983. European Parliament, Committee on Institutional Affairs, Progetto di relazione sul progetto preliminare di trattato che istitutisce l’unione europea, November 8, 1983, Historical Archives, European University Institute. European Parliament, Resolution on the Intergovernmental Conference in the context of Parliament’s strategy for European Union, OJ C 96/115, April 17, 1990. European Parliament, Resolution in the European Parliament’s guidelines for a draft constitution for the European Union, Agence Europe, Documents, no. 1639/1640, July 19, 1990. European Parliament, Resolution on the Intergovernmental Conference in the context of Parliament’s strategy for European Union, OJ C 231/97, September 17, 1990. European Parliament, Interim Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs on Union Citizenship, May 23, 1991, PE 150.034/fin. European Parliament, Report of the Committee on Institutional Affairs on Union Citizenship, November 6, 1991, PE 153.099/fin. European Union, Bull. EC, Supplement 1/76. Finnish Government—Memorandum concerning Finnish points of view with regard to the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference of the European Union, Helsinki, September 18, 1995 The Granting of Special Rights, Bull. EC, Supplement 5/75. Greek Memorandum—Contribution to the discussions on the progress towards political union, May 15, 1990, reprinted in F. Laursen and S. Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992). Letter to the Irish Presidency from the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and the French President Francois Mitterand, reprinted in F. Laursen and S. Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992). Meeting of the Heads of State or Government, The Hague, December 1 and 2, 1969, Final Communiqué, Bull. EC 1-1970. Motion for a resolution on the setting up of an ad hoc committee to draw up proposals concerning the progress and development of the Community, EP Working Documents, Doc. 1-889/80. A Passport Union, Bull. EC, Supplement 7/75. A People’s Europe. Reports from the ad hoc Committee, Bull. EC, Supplement 7/85. Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Communities, The road to European Citizenship, September 24, 1990, reprinted in F. Laursen and S. Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992). Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Communities, Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union, European Citizenship, February 21, 1991, reprinted in F. Laursen and S. Vanhoonacker (eds) (1992). The Schengen Acquis, OJ L 39, September 22, 2000.
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Other Documents Brief vom Altiero Spinelli am seinen Kollegen in Europäischen Parlament, June 25, 1980, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Crocodile Club, Working Report no. 1, Historical Archives, European University Institute. Crocodile—Letter to members of the European Parliament, no. 3 (January 1981), Historical Archives, European University Institute. Crocodile—Letter to members of the European Parliament, no. 5 (June 1981), Historical Archives, European University Institute. Crocodile—Letter to members of the European Parliament, no. 6 (September 1981), Historical Archives, European University Institute. Crocodile—Letter to members of the European Parliament, no. 7 (December 1981), Historical Archives, European University Institute. Kohl, Helmuth (1991), Erklärung der Bundesregierung zu den Ergebnissen des Europäischen Rates in Maastricht, in Verhandlungen des deutschen Bundestages. 12. Wahlperiode. 68. Sitzung vom. Dezember 13, 1991. Mitterand, Francois and Helmuth Kohl (1990), Gemeinsame Botschaft von François Mitterrand und Helmut Kohl (Paris, 6. Dezember 1990), in Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung. Dezember 11, 1990.
Other Official Documents Council of Europe, The European Social Charter, October 18, 1961. Council of Europe, European Convention on Nationality, November 6, 1997.
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acquisition of citizenship 104, 172–3n. 10 ius soli 146 naturalization 146 Adonnino Report 66–70, 75, 80 Amsterdam Treaty 102–3, 109, 112, 122, 132, 155, 170n. 12 Arendt, Hannah 52 Aron, Raymond 18, 30, 148 Avello case 104–5 Bartolini, Stefano 21 Bauböck, Rainer 152 Beetham, David 151 Belgium 17, 75 Bellamy, Richard 152 Benhabib, Seyla 145 Bindi Reports 89–90 Birmingham Decision 101 borders 6, 15, 19, 21–2, 24–5, 30, 38, 47, 65–6, 69, 74–5, 76–7, 81, 93, 96, 104, 106, 112, 124, 126, 131, 138, 142, 161 external borders of Europe 70, 76, 88, 104 internal borders of Europe 12, 38, 75, 84, 107, 112, 121 see also Schengen Agreement Boukhalfa case 104–5, 172n. 8 Castiglione, Dario 144 Charter of Fundamental Rights 98–9, 108–11, 113–14, 116, 120, 122, 126 citizens fundamental rights as EU 16, 23, 27, 29, 56, 58, 61, 72, 84, 104–13, 116, 118, 122, 124, 130–1, 133, 141, 145–6, 165n. 8
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market 12, 18–19, 22, 26, 29, 32–4, 45, 57, 62, 72, 79, 111, 127 as persons 29–30, 73, 78–9, 90, 104, 113 as workers 15, 18–21, 26–30, 42, 73–4, 78–9, 105–6, 127 citizens’ initiative in the EU 125, 128 citizenship definition and conceptualization of 4–5 global 3, 176n. 4 group 128 models of 2, 3, 6, 138, 141, 150, 153 political 5, 11–12, 45, 60, 68–9, 71–3, 82, 87–8, 112, 125, 128–9, 135, 145, 155, 171n. 15 social closure 77 unitary 135, 137–8 see also cosmopolitanism; duties of citizenship; identity; membership; participation; postnationalism; rights; supranationalism civil rights 3, 70, 88, 110 civil society 99, 108–9, 116–18, 128 Closa, Carlos 83, 91 Collins case 106 communitarianism 3 Connolly, William 152 constitutional failure 130 Constitutional Treaty 114–15, 117–18, 120, 122, 127, 130, 132, 161 constitution-making 7, 9, 11, 13, 49, 50–3, 57, 59, 61–4, 65–6, 96, 98, 114, 119, 124–5, 129–31, 133, 134–5, 140, 142, 154–8 deliberations of 53, 55–6, 58–9, 122, 126, 132
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Convention on the Future of Europe 7, 9, 13, 108, 114–33 cosmopolitanism 3, 77, 115, 134–5, 138, 155–6, 161, 163 citizenship 119, 137, 157 political order 149 rights 39, 145, 162 Costa, Olivier 23 Costa case 23–4 Council of Ministers 27, 32, 37, 43, 50–1, 55, 78, 80, 106, 141 critical junctures 7–9, 16, 83, 101, 137, 147, 155, 164n. 7 culture 26, 95, 101, 144 democratic 48 diversity 35, 55, 89, 123 Dahl, Robert A. 135 debate citizenship 5, 11, 18, 32–3, 48, 63, 73, 81, 87–8, 90, 102, 109, 115, 123, 138–9, 141–2, 145, 153, 155–7, 160 European Union 2, 7, 10, 12, 14, 21, 27, 32, 44, 51, 53–9, 65, 68, 70, 73, 82–4, 88, 95–8, 100, 103, 108–13, 115, 117, 120–6, 129–30, 150–1 identity 19, 159 policy 9 scholarly 1, 3, 25, 100, 176n. 6 De Beus, Jos 151 De Búrca, Grainne 29 De Groot, René 172–3n. 10 decision-making 50, 53, 88, 119, 158, 177n. 3 citizen participation 89 citizenship 91 Declaration on the European Identity (Copenhagen Declaration) 34–7, 46–7, 59, 68, 70, 94 democracy 9, 33–4, 46, 53–4, 56, 57–8, 60, 68, 72, 89, 100, 110, 116–20, 125, 135, 140, 151–2, 158 citizenship 22, 26 European 1, 5, 6, 43, 48, 83, 98, 117, 128, 151
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national 87 participatory 117, 119, 125, 128 representative 34, 72, 125 democratic deficit 6, 82, 100, 151 democratization, European Union 55, 71, 151, 161, 163 denizenship 41, 107, 156, 159 Denmark 1, 7, 12, 58, 87, 98, 100–2, 112–3, 142–3, 156, 161–2 diplomatic and consular protection, right to 86, 92–3 direct effect of European law 23–4 Dobson, Lynn 151 d’Oliveira, H. U. J. 83 dual citizenship 104–5, 107, 117, 119, 135, 139–40 dual nationality see dual citizenship duties of citizenship 2, 4, 5, 24, 30, 61, 64, 86, 95, 119, 153 economic and monetary union (EMU) 73, 82, 84 economic integration 15, 17, 20, 22, 26, 51–2, 75, 80, 86, 120, 150, 165n. 8 economic rights 29, 57–8, 88 Edinburgh Decision 101, 119 electoral rights see voting rights employment 18, 54, 58, 61, 85, 121 enlargement of the European Union 2, 14, 33, 114, 135, 142–3, 166n. 1 environmental rights 46, 89 equality see nondiscrimination, right of ethnicity 29, 95, 144 European Commission 7, 13, 28, 32, 37, 39, 42, 47, 67, 71, 74, 82, 87–9, 97, 102, 115, 128, 130, 142 European constitution 2, 64, 71, 72, 85, 114, 122–3, 129, 133, 157 European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) 61, 84, 109, 116 European Council 34, 39, 47, 66–7, 84–5, 87–8, 101–2, 108, 117, 121–2, 125, 129, 131, 143
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195
European Court of Justice (ECJ) 7, 9–10, 16, 22, 23–7, 32, 34, 37, 99, 103–7, 109, 112–13, 135–6, 139, 141–2, 144–5, 161–2, 165n. 10, 170n. 14, 173n. 16 European Community (EC) 31–4, 36, 39–40, 42, 44, 46, 48–9, 51, 53, 55, 61, 68, 70, 73, 75–7, 78, 82 European demos, concept of 45, 69, 83, 125, 128 European Economic Community (EEC) 19, 21–2, 26, 29 European elections 2, 9, 11, 32, 40, 42–5, 47–8, 51–2, 54, 56, 60, 63, 69, 86, 88, 92–3, 112, 116, 119, 128, 146, 154 uniform procedure of 42, 48, 68, 74, 119, 125 European Parliament (EP) 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 28, 32, 42–5, 47–9, 50–6, 58–61, 63–6, 68, 71, 74, 82, 84–5, 87–90, 93, 96–7, 106, 108, 115–16, 119, 139, 141–2, 154, 165n. 13, 166n. 15, 167n. 1 European Political Community (EPC) 20, 167n. 3 European Social Charter 72 Europeanization 39, 65, 69, 80, 94, 117, 120, 134, 139, 146, 156, 159 Europeanness 6, 54, 119, 132 Euroskepticism 7, 58, 63, 99
71, 73–81, 84–5, 88, 91–2, 94, 96, 98, 100, 103–7, 110–13, 116–17, 120–1, 126–8, 131–2, 136–8, 142–5, 154–5, 161–2, 170n. 14, 172–3n. 10, 177n. 4 family 28, 107 see also borders; Schengen Agreement frontiers see borders functional spillover 21, 31
federalism 11, 15, 49, 63, 98, 141, 148, 150, 153 citizenship 62, 119, 139 Eurofederalists 50, 63, 139 federal Europe 46, 52, 84, 89–90, 103, 114, 124, 165n. 2 institutions 97 Finland 103 Fischer, Joschka 114 Føllesdal, Andreas 151 France 4, 17, 75, 100, 103, 112, 130, 141 free movement rights 2, 7–8, 10, 15–16, 18–19, 21–3, 26–30, 33, 37–8, 41–5, 48, 58, 61–3, 65–6,
identity definition of 4–5 European 9, 11, 18, 26, 29, 32–6, 42, 45, 47, 59–60, 65, 68, 70, 72, 83, 103, 109, 129, 149, 151, 156, 163 national 38, 79, 95, 97, 118, 123, 142, 149 see also Declaration on the European Identity;‘no demos’ thesis; supranationalism intergovernmental conference (IGC) 7, 9, 12, 72, 79, 82–5, 87–91, 95, 97, 100, 102–3, 130, 171n. 19
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gender 117 Germany 4, 17, 35, 52, 75, 114, 142 globalization 5, 65, 119, 135–6, 138, 154 global politics 68, 160 Gonzalez, Felipe 84–5 Great Britain see United Kingdom Greece 85, 129, 142 Greek antiquity 5 Guiraudon, Virginie 76 Habermas, Jürgen 83 history 29, 35, 79, 101, 110, 113, 144 citizenship 4, 5, 18, 136 European integration 12, 17, 82, 92, 129, 156 political thought 2 human rights 3, 6, 34, 40, 54–7, 60–3, 68, 72, 84–5, 104, 109, 116, 142, 148
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intergovernmentalism 3, 52, 54, 75, 79, 87, 97, 124, 141, 150, 160 bargaining 71 institutions 50 Ireland 84, 142 Isin, Engin F. 18 Italy 7, 17, 102, 141–2 Joppke, Christian 145 justice 122, 128 social 34, 54–6, 68, 72, 121 Kohl, Helmuth 171n. 19 Kostakopoulou, Theodora 33, 35, 100, 135, 151, 170n. 14 Kratochwil, Friedrich 135 Laeken Declaration 114, 122 language 29, 79, 95, 103, 144 legitimacy 20, 43, 45, 51, 53–4, 64, 88, 95, 108, 114, 116, 121, 128, 132, 140, 144, 152, 158, 171n. 19 citizenship 43, 88–9, 97, 126, 146, 154 constitution-making 51–3, 57, 63 European Union 43, 55, 58, 63, 85–8, 109, 125, 155 nation-states 26 liberalism 3, 73 Lord, Christopher 151 Luxembourg 17, 75, 89 Maas, Willem 16, 26, 152, 174n. 10 Maastricht Treaty 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 60, 65, 66, 73, 92–7, 98–104, 108, 111–12, 115, 119, 131, 137, 139–40, 150–1, 155 market 2, 16, 18, 19, 21–2, 24, 26, 29, 61, 79–80, 84, 97, 120, 125, 127, 143 citizenship 12, 32–4, 62, 72–4, 79–80, 89, 111, 127, 137, 145, 168–9n. 27 common 20–1, 23–5, 27, 30, 45, 71, 165n. 8, 165n. 13 integration 1, 3, 6, 12, 21–2, 26–8, 30–2, 42, 52, 62, 65, 72–3, 81, 94, 110, 116, 127, 131, 147
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internal see market, single liberalization 71 participation 18, 22, 29, 45, 57, 80, 128 rights 21–2, 39, 132 single 11, 17, 62–3, 65, 71–2, 78, 82, 84, 116, 127, 130, 150 Martinez Sala case 104–5 membership, definition of 4–6 see also acquisition of citizenship; cosmopolitanism; free movement rights; nationality, principle; nation-state; personhood, access to rights; postnationalism; residence rights; supranationalism Menéndez, Agustín José 128 Micheletti case 104–5 migration 2, 81, 159 Miller, David 82 Mitterand, Francois 171n. 19 multilevel polity 3, 14, 69, 94, 135, 153, 158 European citizenship 13, 134, 158, 171n. 15 rights 6, 72, 148 nationalism 2, 83, 140 nationality 5, 7, 18–19, 28, 38, 41, 73, 78, 83, 92, 98–9, 101, 104, 118, 131–4, 136–7, 139–40, 145–6, 148–9, 154–5, 159, 162, 165n. 8, 170n. 14, 172n. 8, 172–3n. 10, 177n. 2 European 100 membership 2, 11–12, 40, 62–3, 91, 96, 105, 107, 113, 121–2, 124, 134 principle 10, 13, 56, 67, 86, 88, 92, 94, 106, 110–12, 138, 145, 155–6, 159 see also nondiscrimination in the European Union, right to nation-state 1, 5, 13, 15, 20–1, 22, 23–5, 34, 41, 48, 52, 53–5, 57, 68–70, 72, 77, 80, 82, 91, 94–7, 99, 101, 104, 113, 124, 130, 134–8, 139, 141, 143–4, 147–9, 153, 156–7, 159–60
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Index citizenship 3, 18, 28, 30, 36, 60, 84, 87, 98, 105–6, 108, 111, 146, 154, 162 The Netherlands 17, 75, 130 Neunreither, Karlheinz 17 Nic Shuibhne, Niamh 106 ‘no demos’ thesis 5, 149 noncitizens 1, 5, 41, 62, 78, 87, 90, 104, 112, 120, 145–6 nondiscrimination in the European Union, right to 10, 20–2, 24–7, 58, 61–2, 89, 104–6, 110, 121, 126, 132, 165n. 8, 170n. 14, 173n. 16 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 99, 108 normative concepts and theories 6, 139 Norway 52 O’Keeffe, David 83 Ombudsman of the European Union (EU) 69, 92–3, 117 participation definition of 4–6 see also duties of citizenship; European elections; market participation; political participation passport 36–7 abolition of controls 47 common European 37–8, 66 role in modern politics 36 union 11, 36–9, 46–8 see also borders; Schengen Agreement path dependence 7–8, 63, 72, 124, 137, 151, 155 A People’s Europe 66, 70–1, 79 personhood, access to rights 80–1, 92, 106–7, 156 Pierson, Paul 8 policy-making 9, 11, 16, 19, 26–7, 32, 34, 46, 51, 54–6, 58–9, 63–4, 67, 69, 73–4, 80, 95, 100, 111, 116–17, 127, 130–1, 133, 142, 144, 155, 157–8, 161, 168–9n. 27
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political community 1–2, 5–6, 9, 22, 29, 32–5, 41–2, 49, 59, 64, 77, 83, 87, 90, 93, 95, 97, 100, 102, 109, 113, 143–4, 162 political participation 93, 113, 151 European Union 6, 56, 60–2, 64, 80, 86–8, 115, 119, 125, 128 member states 45, 69, 80, 100, 112 Portugal 142 postnationalism 1, 68, 83, 99, 103, 113, 115, 119, 141, 145–6, 149, 155, 159, 163 citizenship 2, 5, 7, 13, 69, 88, 97, 102–3, 113, 119, 124, 134–9, 144–6, 148, 156 rights 5, 77, 87, 102, 136, 145, 159 Preuss, Ulrich 22 process tracing 7–10, 149, 155 public order and safety 21–2, 67, 75, 107 public sphere 52, 83 qualified majority voting (QMV) 73, 103, 169n. 9 regional integration 1, 68, 152 citizenship 157 religion 110, 113, 129 renationalization 14, 161 residence rights 1, 12, 28–9, 41, 44, 58, 63, 67, 73, 75, 77–81, 85, 88, 92, 94, 105–7, 112, 144, 170n. 14 family 78, 80, 106–7 rights definition of 4–6 see also Charter of Fundamental Rights; civil rights; cosmopolitanism; economic rights; environmental rights; European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR); free movement rights; fundamental rights as EU citizens; human rights; market rights; multilevel polity; personhood, access to rights; postnationalism; residence rights; social rights; supranationalism; voting rights
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Index
Roman Empire 37 Royer case 37 rule of law 34, 57, 68, 110, 116, 118, 175–6n. 35 Schengen Agreement 12, 35, 65, 75–7, 79–81, 142, 161–2, 170n. 12 Schnapper, Dominique 82 Schönlau, Justus 109 security community 68 European 2, 55, 61, 75, 77, 128 national 67, 75, 107 personal 93 securitization 77 semicitizenship 41, 48, 93, 139, 146 Shaw, Jo 105, 169–70n. 10, 171n. 15 Shore, Cris 70, 82, 93 social rights 3, 28, 43, 54, 57–8, 85, 87–9, 103, 116–17, 121, 127, 132, 142, 162 solidarity 46–7, 54–5, 110, 121–2, 128, 142, 144, 162 sovereignty 2, 16, 23, 26, 73, 90, 94, 97, 103, 106, 112, 142 Spain 7, 82, 84, 86–8, 96, 141–2 Spinelli, Altiero 50–1, 53 statelessness 28, 123 Stuttgart Declaration 71–2 supranationalism 3, 7–8, 12, 16–18, 27–8, 39, 44, 46, 48, 52, 68–9, 72, 74, 79, 81, 87, 92–3, 102–3, 129, 132, 138–40, 143, 146, 152, 154, 156, 159–61, 175n. 42 citizenship 5, 11, 13, 26, 32, 41, 47, 48, 69, 96, 103, 105, 120, 134, 139, 148, 151 identity 11 law 22–5 rights 3, 7, 40, 108, 145–6 supremacy of European law 23 Sweden 142–3
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Switzerland 52 territory 19, 21–2, 28, 37, 40, 67, 77–80, 90, 121, 142–4, 146 territoriality 2, 143, 162 third-country nationals in the EU 38, 67, 75–8, 83, 89, 109, 112, 139, 143–6 Tindemans, Leo 36 transnationalism, concept of 6–7, 136, 148, 150, 153, 164n. 3, 164n. 4, 176n. 4 Treaty of Lisbon 72, 114–15, 130–1 Treaty of Paris (ECSC Treaty) 8, 10, 15–20, 26, 40, 50, 71, 106, 137, 140 Treaty of Rome 8, 19–22, 27, 40, 42, 67, 71, 73, 78, 99 Treaty on European Union (TEU) see Maastricht Treaty Uecker/Jaquet case 104–5 United Kingdom 4, 7, 58, 143 United States 52 values 12–4, 29, 34–5, 46, 50, 55, 89, 95, 106, 110, 113, 114, 116, 118, 129, 133, 139, 151, 155 Van Gend case 23 voting rights 43, 46, 48, 74, 88, 125, 127, 146, 169–70n. 10 European elections 11, 33, 42–8, 87, 92–3, 132, 154 local elections 69, 84–5, 87, 92, 132 national elections 86–7 Weiler, J. H. H. 83 welfare 61, 85, 95 state 142, 162 Wiener, Antje 16, 75, 152 World War I and II 2 Zambrano case 144–5
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