To what extent can EU citizenship be characterised as an exclusive project,
and why does this matter?
To what extent can EU citizenship be characterised as an exclusive project, and why does this matter?
Introduction
Since the expansion of the European Union into many States of Eastern Europe, EU citizenship is now the status of over 470 Million people. This piece will explore the concept of EU citizenship in light of existing exclusive and inclusive models and will analyze the extent to which it fits in with the former characterisation. In addition, the importance of this exercise will be explained with reference to the political direction of the EU.
A.The Concepts of Exclusive and Inclusive forms of Citizenship
1.Exclusive Citizenship
Exclusive citizenship is the concept of singular identity, which draws a distinction between the citizens and aliens that form the population of a particular sovereignty. Bauböck identifies three key considerations that are relevant to this exercise and represent the distinctions between the citizen and the alien. Firstly, there is the link of citizenship to territoriality. Pogge writes:
For nearly every human being, and for almost every piece of territory, there is exactly one government with pre-eminent authority over, and primary responsibility for, this person or territory
This notion is at least flexible in that acceptance for the responsibility of a State over its citizens, who are not resident within the borders of the State, is at least retained and thus, concepts of absolute sovereignty, such as that promoted by Hobbes do not form part of the modern concept of exclusive citizenship.
Secondly, there is the concept of exclusion from the rights of citizens. This republican notion leads to a territory where the alien has none of the rights of participation that are granted the citizen and would include employment, free healthcare, welfare, free education and political participation. Conversely, there is the obligation for aliens to abide by the laws of the land in which they reside but this does not escape from the fact that residence alone cannot imply personal ratification of Locke’s conceptualised social contract to which only express adherence can induce obligation.
Thirdly, there is the exclusive power of the sovereign to determine the acquisition and loss of citizenship. The Hague Convention on Matters of Nationality 1930 establishes that the creation of parameters for citizenship are to be determined by the Sovereign State but this has the result that rules will differ for each state thus resulting in the phenomenon of dual or even tri citizenship where a person is born in a State that practices ius soli but has parents of another State that practice ius sanguinis or even ius sanguinis
2.Inclusive Citizenship
By contrast, the inclusive citizenship model is a liberal concept that, despite maintaining the distinction between the citizen and the alien, breaks down the above three characteristics that form barriers between the citizen and the alien.
Firstly there is external citizenship for emigrants who are able to retain certain rights such as pensions, voting and welfare despite their movement to other states. Secondly, there is Hammar’s concept of ‘denzienship’, which allows immigrants to derive social rights, such as employment and welfare, from their country of destination, which is common after certain periods of residence in the destination State. Thirdly, there can be a right to citizenship by virtue of birth or parentage that is protected under International Law.
B.European Citizenship as a creature of the Exclusive Model?
The EU is an habitually phenomenal creature since the concept of citizenship is not in relation to a particular State. Instead, it is to a political unity for which each sovereign Member State has renounced exclusive governance over the absolute hierarchy of many laws relating to the creation of the single market, human rights and, largely, the single European Currency.
The EU is a single geographic entity consisting of the Member States. Article 8 of the EU Treaty explains this clearly:
Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Unioncitizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights conferred by this Treaty and shall be subject to the duties imposed thereby.
This therefore means that the citizens have the ‘exclusive’ right to move freely within the EU and this satisfies the territorial aspect of exclusive citizenship as well as the exclusion of rights to non-citizens residing within the EU. The only difference is that free movement is granted by virtue of the open borders between the Member States but this is incidental to the realisation of free movement of persons under the EC Treaty and the impossible task of controlling the movement of non EU citizens within the EU territory once they have entered it.
However, with regard to the third heading of the exclusive right of acquisition and loss of citizenship, no such powers exist under EU jurisdiction but remain within the grasp of each sovereign State. The result is that there are as many ways of becoming an EU Member State citizen (ergo EU citizen) as there are EU States. In addition, inclusive aspects of citizenship such as external citizenship, denzienship and the right to citizenship are also regulated at national level. The result is that the EU is an exclusive project by mere virtue of its territorial attribute but it lacks all other the other characteristics of both exclusive and inclusive citizenship and is merely classifiable as an annex to citizenship of a Member State.
C.The importance of characterizing EU citizenship
The importance of identifying the extent of EU citizenship as exclusive in terms of territory and single market rights alone highlights the inherent problem of creating umbrella citizenship of a collection of politically devolved ‘fatherlands’ as opposed to a single European ‘fatherland’. The analysis therefore poses the question, should Europe head for a federal construction that abandons all forms of national identity in favour of EU citizenship or, should the concept of ‘EU citizenship’ be abandoned in favour of retaining national citizenship with integral rights and privileges of a European Free Market Alliance?
Conclusion
The answers to the above questions are beyond the scope of this exercise but the key factor is that the extent of EU citizenship as a territory that operates a single market motivates consideration of the direction that Europe is going to take in the future and this is now especially important given the abandonment of the Draft Constitution.
Bibliography
Legislation
EC Treaty (Paris, 2001)
The Hague Convention on Matters of Nationality 1930
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Text Books
Antalosvky. E, Melchior and Puntscher-Riekmann. S, 1997, Integration durch Demokratie. Neue Impulse für die Europäische Union, Metropolis, Marburg
Hobbes, Thomas, 1973, Leviathan, Everyman's Library, London, XXI:117
Locke. J, 1956, The Second Treatise on Government, Macmillan, New York, VIII:62-3
Hammar, T, 1990, Democracy and the Nation-State. Aliens, Denizens and Citizens in a World of International Migration, Avebury, Aldershot.
Zilbershats. Y, The Right to Human Citizenship, 2002, Transnational Publishers, New York
Article
Pogge, T, 1992, Cosmopolitanism and Sovereignty, Ethics 103, October 92:48-75.
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