EU citizenship - problems, potential, policy

1 November 2011

Organised in conjunction with Belgian Embassy in London as part of the "Belgian Salons" Series.

Citizenship of the European Union, as introduced in the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, has often been considered a purely symbolic gesture. It was a status derived from national membership, which brought few new rights for its bearers, and only barely disguised its mercantile nature, based as it was on free movement across the EU's internal market. However, since the late 1990s, increasingly assertive rulings by the European Court of Justice have transformed the legal standing of Union citizenship. While still secondary to nationality, it now represents an independent source of rights, which enshrines freedom of movement and residence, and supplements it with significant social rights, even where the EU citizen is not economically active. Consequently, the distinction between EU citizens, national citizens, and to a degree third country nationals, are increasingly blurred; indeed, the Court has declared Union citizenship "destined to be the fundamental status of citizens in the EU". For some, this is the sign of a positive institutional change that gives expression to the potential of EU citizenship to create a new political community beyond the state. For others, it is a top-down process, which undermines national rights of social and industrial citizenship without offsetting these with strong EU-level rights, and which falters on the absence of collective identification and solidarity at European level.

This panel discussion will bring together experts to discuss both assessments, with concrete reference to legal and policy issues where these tensions have become particularly manifest.

Speakers:

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