Written by Joe J. Grech B.A. (Hons.) M.A. (Sussex), April 1999.

Although not a new concept, it had to be The Maastricht Treaty (official name - Treaty on European Union, TEU), which amended the Treaty of Rome, to create for the first time a legal basis for citizenship of the European Union. This has brought attention to the whole idea of what Citizenship on a supranational level entails. The problem in 1992, as it still remains now, is not a question of accepting the legality of a common citizenship. For all intents and purposes, and with the European Court of Justice repeatedly emphasising the supremacy of Community law over municipal law, there is a de facto legal basis which applies directly to the citizens of the member states (for a discussion on this and other EU legal aspects see Petroni, 1997: 86-106). The question remains, however, whether or not the people of Europe consider themselves as ‘active’ European citizens. Elizabeth Meehan quotes Commissioner Lord Jenkins as saying that he "could not foresee the day when citizens of Member States of the EC would say in Japan that they were European instead of French, German or Italian" (Meehan, 1993: 1). This would seem to confirm that, in respect to identity, it is still the ‘national’ which looms large, at least vis-à-vis the European ‘Community’, in people’s lives. Moreover, although the efforts of the Union seem to be directed towards a European citizenship, together and in addition to a national citizenship, concern may still arise whether this might erode loyalty to one’s state, and ergo, the state’s privileges within its own territory. This territorial aspect is in its turn connected (for some more than others) with the issue of Subsidiarity which has also led to a fair amount of controversy, primarily due to the different interpretations attributed to it. Importantly, state concerns may inhibit the development of EU-wide equity.

This essay will attempt to decipher the term ‘Common EU Citizenship’ which apart from being prima facia a legal concept, has other social and political connotations. The essay will conclude by trying to push the idea that the major goal of a Common EU Citizenship should be, despite the inherent difficulties, the promotion of a situation of equity for all the people of the EU.

To do this a number of issues have to be tackled. What does ‘Citizenship’ mean? Can a concept usually associated with a single (nation) state be carried over to a higher level, that is, within the supranational confines of an organisation such as the European Union? What is the ‘democratic deficit’ and does it hinder the development of citizenship?

Ever since the French Revolution of 1789, The ‘Citizen’ and ‘Civil Society’, have been the focus of much theoretical discussion. An underlying theme in this discussion has inevitably been the idea of the ‘Social Contract’.

According to Habermas, the idea of "Citizenship developed out of Rousseau’s notion of self-determination" (Habermas, 1992: 4). He adds that today the social contract is no longer conceived as a historical pact but, rather, it simply provides an abstract model of how political authority is constituted and legitimated (ibid.). Seligman tells us that in the second half of the nineteenth century there was less concern with civil society and more with the idea of citizenship. This came about following the critique of Marx, the growing capitalist economy of West European Societies, and the hitherto rise of socialist movements (Seligman, 1992: 101). Citizenship together with fuller membership and participation in collective (social) life, became the new model for participation in civil society (Ibid., p. 102).

Dahrendorf has interestingly articulated the dialectical and intellectual move from the socialised individual tied to society through a self-regulating natural state to a more realistic view of the citizen who has to be regulated through a social contract, as "Seeking Rousseau, Finding Hobbes" (See Dahrendorf, 1985: 41-80). Dahrendorf argues his case thus:

(Ibid., p. 80)

David Held proposes the view that citizenship entails membership in the community and membership implies forms of social participation. Thus, says Held, citizenship is above all about the involvement of people in the community in which they live, and the debate about citizenship requires one to think about the very nature of the conditions of membership and political participation (Held, 1991: 20). Citizenship rights, argues Held, are public and social entitlements which can only be abrogated by the state under clearly delimited circumstances. However, continues Held, the benefits of citizenship are defined in terms of individuals on the basis of a fundamental equality of condition, that is, their membership of the community (Ibid., p. 21).

All this makes sense in regards to the nation state. But how does it equate to something of the nature of the EU? Can Euro-citizens say that they are in fact members of a community? How does the EU fit in with what Dahrendorf considers as the necessary social institutions ? Foreseeably, an EU developing in a more institutional manner and with more legislative and regulatory power can easily take the place of the state in this context, but it will be considerably more difficult in terms of social institutions and a social contract unless there is also social cohesion (or to use today’s buzzword, ‘harmonisation’) between all the member states. Held says that the language of citizenship per se refers to the nation state within which the claims of citizenship, community and participation are made and which is, in his words, being eroded and challenged. Thus, says Held "the historical moment seems to have passed for trying to define citizen’s claims and entitlements in terms of membership of a national community"( Ibid., p. 25. My emphasis on ‘national’). He is here referring to the globalisation of ‘citizen’s concerns’, such as environmental hazards and arms proliferation. But what he says can also be considered to hold true in the case of the EU which the Eurosceptics insist is nibbling away at the sovereignty of states and therefore at the exclusive claims upon the citizens of said states. There may be some truth in this, particularly if one holds the view that increasing political and social union will thereby give rise to a new type of citizenship; the EU variation. The question that has to be mooted here is whether the gain of one entails the loss of the other. Is it important anyway?

Returning to Habermas again, one can find a possible answer to some of the above questions, primarily by removing the equation of "citizen is to state" and replacing it with "citizen is to civil rights" or even "citizen is to democratic rights". He explains it thus:

Before Habermas, however, the concept of citizenship-as-rights which primarily arose in the post-W.W.II period, was best exemplified by the work of T. H. Marshall (Kymlicka and Norman, 1995: 285). Citizenship, according to Marshall, is "a status bestowed on all those who are full members of a community. All who possess the status are equal with respect to rights and duties with which that status is endowed....and protected by common law." And in respect to developing political institutions, the civil rights elements are those "necessary for individual freedom - liberty of the person, freedom of speech, thought and faith, the right to own property and to conclude valid contracts and the right to justice" (Marshall T. H. (1950) Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, quoted in Close, 1995: 6-7).

Using Marshall’s views boosted by Habermas’ interpretation of citizenship today, that is, in terms of civil rights, one can now perhaps more readily contemplate the plausibility of a common European citizenship, rather than one necessarily dependant upon a nation state as the only guarantor of rights. After Maastricht, EU citizenship has the legal basis Marshall and Habermas implicitly referred to; it also has through the EP’s new powers relatively more democratic representation. Democratic and civil rights in the EU are usually taken as a sine qua non, but is this assumption correct? Is the democratic deficit too huge to bridge the gap between citizen rights within the nation-state and the rights that the citizen can enjoy on a supranational level? In other words does the "Euro-Citizen" really have the power to, as Habermas puts it, alter his material legal status? As is the case with nation-states, this is also a moot point. The power the EU citizen has today upon decision making in the EU seems to stem a priori from his/her citizenship of a member state and although the potential for ‘active’ citizenship within the member states is taken for granted, the same cannot necessarily be said for the EU level.

Under Article 8 EEC, ‘every person holding the nationality of a member state shall be a citizen of the Union’. Subsequent Articles set out the rights appertaining to citizenship: ‘ to move and reside freely within the territory of the member states’ (Article 8a); to vote and stand for election in municipal and European elections in the member state in which he or she resides (Article 8b); to receive protection from diplomatic and consular authorities of any member state in any country in which the member state of which he or she is a national is not represented (Article 8c); and to petition the European Parliament and refer matters to the Ombudsman (Article 8d). Under Article 8e these rights may be strengthened or supplemented by the Council of Ministers, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the EP (Bainbridge and Teasdale, 1995: 41).

Thus the above amendments gave the concept of citizenship legal footing within the Union.

However, citizenship of Europe, as a concept, had been propounded several years before the Maastricht Treaty itself. The Tindemans’ report had foreseen measures to bring Europe close to the citizens. The European Council meeting at Fontainebleau in June 1984 set up the Committee for a People’s Europe which made several proposals, many of which were enacted in the TEU. Besides the above mentioned Citizenship and Ombudsmen these also included the European passport and a European flag as well as the easing of frontier controls, free movement of persons, the mutual recognition of qualifications and freedom of establishment.

Due to these developments, Meehan argues that:

(Meehan, 1997: 69).

There are, according to Meehan, recent arguments which stress that the link between citizen, nationality and nation-state, although contingent, is not necessary. Meehan proposes that a "more pluralist and complex conception of citizenship is emerging along with the changing political context of European integration". Meehan asserts that both the bases of legal and political rights, normally linked with nationality, appear in the social policies of the European Union (ibid., p.70). But are these granted ‘rights’ enough basis for citizenship?

All the above mentioned rights and symbols are important factors for the creation of (at least a nascent) EU citizenship. But how effective are these factors, keeping in mind the aforementioned views of David Held in regards to what citizenship entails? Held emphasises that on a state level "people have been barred from citizenship on grounds of class, gender, race and age among many other factors" (Held, 1991: 20). Has this problem of exclusion been solved by the TEU? As we shall see, it hasn’t.

In a declaration annexed to the TEU it is specified that 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’. This is an important legal point as different states have different definitions of nationality. The UK, for example, through the British Nationality Act of 1981 has defined several distinct categories of British national which include British citizen, British subjects with the right of abode, and British dependent territories citizen. German citizenship on the other hand is only conferred through the descent or the jus sanguinis principle while in France it is the place of birth which determines citizenship, or jus soli. Moreover common citizenship has proven to be another contentious issue as was seen by debates during the referenda in Denmark and France and it was therefore a consensus decision to define nationality, and therefore, citizenship according to the criteria of, and exclusive to, the member states. This ‘flexibility’, which enhanced the possibility of consensus agreement (the only system which, in matters not covered by Qualified Majority Voting, enables the European Council of Ministers to proceed), kept such problems as the standing of foreign (or guest) workers and illegal immigrants from being added to the citizenship question. Thus, the problem regarding exclusion from citizenship has been passed back on to the individual member states themselves. Nothing has really been solved. If anything it has been even more obfuscated with the introduction of Subsidiarity which is supposedly a safeguard against the dreaded and oft blamed ‘democratic deficit’.

The debate about the democratic deficit is a strange one. One can say that it hinges on whether the EU’s decision making mechanisms really allow active participation by the citizens. To speak of a democratic deficit is therefore to attribute to the EU a status of a political community (or should I say polity) which suffers from lack of citizen participation. Otherwise where is the complaint? Nobody complains of a democratic deficit when, for example, NATO takes action without consulting the ‘people’ of the member states (they complain about other things, but not of a democratic deficit which, per se, requires a different type of organisation, at a higher level of integration, than purely an inter-governmental one to conceptually exist). In other words, it says that the EU is a community whose institutions are deficient in providing the citizens with the means to influence developments. Admitting a democratic deficit is admitting that the EU is a political community of sorts. Where exactly the deficit lies has come under scrutiny and partly explains why, for example, for Lehning, European citizenship is perhaps a mirage.

Lehning says that according to Sbragia the deficit is due to the lack of power exercised by the European Parliament (EP), while for Shirley Williams the democratic deficit should be "understood as the gap between the powers transferred to the community level and the control of the elected parliament over them" and that "the loss of accountability to national parliaments has not been compensated by increased accountability to the European Parliament" (Lehning, 1997: 186). Lehning proposes that three main elements of a democratic deficit should be distinguished, namely:

(Lehning 1997: 187).

Some are more optimistic however. Paul Close argues that the upshot of the changes right up to the TEU (which include, inter alia, co-decision procedures, parliamentary right to vote for or reject the EU budget and the right to call for the dismissal of the members of the Commission) may be seen as a "gradual but substantial re-balancing of decision and law-making powers between the Parliament and the Council.....and the Commission" (Close, 1995: 250). However, as Close admits, there remains the question of whether Parliament can initiate legislation rather than request legislation, which does not constitute an obligation for the Commission to comply. I would contend (with the risk of becoming unpopular) that the role of the EP, as it presently stands, is akin to that of watchdog. Is this enough however? Interestingly recent events have given a new perspective on things which brings hope to some and unadulterated joy to others.

The Commission is made up of state nominated Commissioners, who, in principle, are not representing the states but are nominally autonomous. For a long time it has been argued that this system of nomination is undemocratic and Commissioners are only ex-politicians, whose domestic career was over, being ‘promoted upwards’ and are not the people’s choice and cannot in all truth be expected not to be under some sort of state pressure. Although many Commissioners have carried out their roles with dignity and ability, the sneaking suspicion has always been that not everything was kosher. The problem is that the EP who has a veto on the appointment of the Commission, can only vote out the whole Commission en bloc rather than individual members. The bomb exploded in March 1999 with the en masse resignation of the Commission in what has been called a "Corruption Scandal". This followed a formal inquiry by an independent team of five jurists and auditors requested by the EP, which was heavily critical of three Commissioners. The most criticised was Edith Cresson, the former French Prime Minister, who was implicated with fraud and nepotism. Although dithering at first, the Commission, faced with the threat of a Parliamentary motion of censure to sack the whole commission, resigned (see The Guardian, various issues, 15 - 23 March 1999). I contend that the consequences of this event, unprecedented as it seems, will be a boost to those who support further democratisation of the EU. The EP has come out of this smelling of roses, and now has a causus belli which it can use to garner further rights. On the other hand, one can say that the EP’s role of watch-dog has been vindicated and no further powers need be transferred.

The TEU’s Subsidiarity clause says that:

At face value it would seem that Subsidiarity is incompatible with a common European citizenship for the simple reason that with the full eventual achievement of the latter, all matters for decision would be of Community interest rather than of the state or region. However things are not that simple. Subsidiarity has also been invoked as a means of keeping check upon the EU institutions especially the Commission due to the democratic deficit. The EP as the major complainer in regards to the democratic deficit (see above), has been at the forefront in promoting Subsidiarity and in February 1984 it adopted a "Draft Treaty establishing the European Union" in which it made a case in favour of Subsidiarity. Parliament’s aim was to entrust Community institutions only with those powers required to complete successfully the tasks they may carry out more satisfactorily than the states acting independently.

The main problem besetting Subsidiarity has been how it should be interpreted. The actual wording in the TEU gives no guidance as to how an objective can be judged as being better achieved by the community or otherwise. If Subsidiarity is meant as a means of bringing day to day or minor decisions closer to the people than it is wholly compatible with common citizenship. If however it is taken to mean (as anti-federalist states might), that Subsidiarity allows states to go their own way in national matters and avoid supranationalism as much as possible, than it is hardly compatible. The British government in 1989, for example, cited Subsidiarity as its reasons for not signing the social charter which would have put its citizens on par with the nationals of the other signatories. This was even before Subsidiarity had been made of general application through the TEU and already it was being used as an excuse to wriggle out of moving more in line with the rest of the Community.

On matters such as public health, culture, consumer protection, and education which are of obvious interest to citizens, there is a clear understanding of the need for joint decision making between national governments and the EC. However Subsidiarity as understood and applied by minimalists can cause the undermining of this joint decision making to the detriment, perhaps, of equity for all citizens, irrelevant of where they live.

In many ways Subsidiarity may serve to prompt clear thinking on the role and efficiency of national and EU institutions within a larger and more diverse European Union. It already suggests through its nature that the EU is not made up of culturally and politically homogenous people.

What Lehning calls ‘economic citizenship’ wherein the people of the EU enjoy the four freedoms (see Lehning, 1997) has now been accepted by the member states and legally established through the Maastricht Treaty. In many ways the Maastricht treaty per se was not really an innovative document but rather a reflection of the current state of European integration (Duff, A. et al 1994: 26).

However, There was one further innovation in the Maastricht Treaty, that is, the various opt-outs from important treaty provisions, especially the social protocol, which will in turn effect citizenship in as far as equal conditions in all member states are concerned. I contend that the whole idea of citizenship entails, if not equality at least a state of equity. Although Meehan proposes that there is a relatively level playing field in regards to social rights due to the ECJ decisions and enforcement, (see Meehan, 1991: 133-146 and Meehan, 1993: 52-58) I view her position as too optimistic; some states have deliberately, and to some extant successfully, rejected harmonisation. The concept of Subsidiarity has added to this problem in as far as that, with the interpretation given by Britain for example, it can be effectively an opt-out in itself. However, if one were to consider it from an other angle, the bringing of decisions to a level even closer to the people cannot but enhance the power of the citizen. Although it is the state or regional government which legislates, they are directly answerable to their electorate and thus closer than what might be perceived as the bureaucracies of the Commission and the Council. However this particular aspect of the democratic deficit can be off-set by increasing the powers of the European Parliament which is directly elected.

The major task, in the present author’s opinion, is however to bring the citizens of the different member states closer together, at least in regards to the concept of EU citizenship itself. The symbols of the European flags and passport in themselves have not proved to be enough, and most Europeans would be hard pressed to be enthusiastic towards the European anthem (except, perhaps, the German speaking people). Nonetheless, the present ongoing policy of "unity through diversity" can only enhance the objective of instilling a common sense of culture (albeit only a ‘high’ one) and identity in the people of Europe. Language is of course a problem with 11 official languages and many more recognised. However the avoidance of having one of these being officially dominant over the others has helped in this regard. Moreover the problem can only get better as many more of the younger generations seem willing to learn, and converse in languages other than their own. These younger people seem more prepared to let bygones be bygones and are not themselves mentally and emotionally scarred by the conflicts of the past as their older forebears were.

Notwithstanding this, the future is not easily foretold. Although the process might seem irreversible, xenophobia is not something easily swept under the carpet and can raise its ugly head if conditions become ripe for it. Thus, the well being of the people of the member states within the EU is perhaps one the few weapons against the old antagonisms. The social issues are therefore of immense importance to the creation of a truly credible European citizenship. Problems such as unemployment, housing, education and income gaps have to be solved before one can say that the danger is past. Measures such as the Schengen agreements, although a logical step in the process of further integration, can exacerbate the problem as people in search of a better lifestyle flood over previously controlled borders, (these same borders which are being faced with an increase in international crime) thus causing the exportation of misery and furthering the grudges of a host country whose citizens might not wish to be burdened by somebody else’s problems.

As its primary raison d’être, the EU has built upon the Communities, whose aims were to improve the economies of the member states. European citizenship is inextricably tied to these aims, as are further political union and eventually common security and foreign policy. The process might be slower than one could envisage, however the signs are that the EU is gradually getting there. Ironically, it is only equity which can guarantee a unified Europe, and a common European citizenship implies just that. Thus, a true, tangible and equitable EU citizenship, felt and enjoyed by the people is also, besides being an economic imperative, a social and political need.

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