How successful are the attempts to create a citizenship of the European Union?

Résumé du document

Although the formal concept of European citizenship appeared for the first time in the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, the idea thereof goes back to the early years of the European construction.
The Treaty founding the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 instituted a "basis for a broader and deeper community among peoples long divided by bloody conflicts" as stated in its preamble. More importantly, it ruled out discrimination between nationals of the different member states working in the Steel and Coal industries thus taking the first step towards the creation of a real European citizenship. Other significant progresses have been made ever since but always in an underlying manner and it is no earlier than 1992 that the expression "European citizenship" first appeared in a Treaty.
One shall however not be mistaken by the formal creation of this citizenship, and take it for definite and irremediable. As Willem Maas argues, the European citizenship is still dependent on the goodwill of member-states because it is "based on a political bargain among [them]" and therefore the whole process might collapse if disagreements arouse between states.For these reasons, one can wonder how this embryonic citizenship deals with the very structure of the European Union, which remains a patchwork of different states with different cultures, laws and conceptions of citizenship.

Extraits

[...] How successful are the attempts to create a citizenship of the European Union? Although the formal concept of European citizenship appeared for the first time in the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, the idea thereof goes back to the early years of the European construction. The Treaty founding the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 instituted a “basis for a broader and deeper community among peoples long divided by bloody conflicts” as stated in its preamble. More importantly, it ruled out discrimination between nationals of the different member states working in the Steel and Coal industries thus taking the first step towards the creation of a real European citizenship. [...]

[...] This is a tremendously weakens the European citizenship, because the conditions for its acquisition are different in every member state. Another weakness is the structure itself of the European Union, which is still based on the agreement between states. The successive treaties that constructed the EU are negotiated between states and require the acceptance of each state before they can be adopted. This situation results in the European citizenship being subjected to the goodwill of the member states, who will never give up the core of their power: drawing the line between nationals and foreigners. [...]

[...] The Treaty states that every citizen of a member state automatically becomes a citizen of the European Union. Citizenship is notably defined as a set of political, social and civil rights and the Treaty addresses all of these aspects although not necessarily completely as it will later be shown. These rights make up the very core of the EU citizenship as the first and basic requirement of any citizenry is to grant citizens rights. Firstly, the emphasis is on the freedom of movement within the EU, making the EU a homogenous space to travel within. [...]

[...] Although generous, this way of thinking may make the EU citizenship even fuzzier. The European citizenship is a very specific concept, and as opposed to the national citizenships it is more about making internal movements within the EU easier than really creating a new and complete set of rights that could possibly enter into conflict with national rights. That is to say that the EU citizenship is dependent on national citizenships and therefore is unable to gain support from citizens who do not consider themselves to be European citizens as much as German or French citizens. [...]

[...] However, campaigns are led country by country and therefore it is impossible to talk about a true European election. Moreover, despite the recent creation of European parties, none of them runs as such which means that they still present themselves to the electorate as national parties. At the national level, European citizens have been granted the right to vote and run for local elections in every member state. This measure is aimed at equalising the political rights of European citizens throughout Europe wherever they live. [...]