European Citizenship

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