The idea of European citizenship began to develop in the early Seventies. In particular, during the 1974 Paris Summit, the Tindemans Report was drawn up, containing a chapter devoted to the Europe of citizens and the granting of rights to citizens. The concept is taken up by the Adonnino Committee, the Committee on a People’s Europe of 1985, whose report contains a list of special rights for European citizens.
The expression "citizenship of the European Union" appears only in the Spinelli Project, the Draft Treaty establishing the European Union, submitted to the European Parliament in 1984. Article 3 states, "Citizens of the Member States are therefore citizens of the Union. Citizenship of the Union is linked to the status of a national of a Member State; it cannot be acquired or lost separately. Citizens of the Union shall participate in political life in the forms provided for in this Treaty, shall enjoy the rights accorded to them by the Union’s legal order and shall comply with its rules".
The provisions on European citizenship enter primary law in 1992, with the entry into force of the Maastricht Treaty. The rules blur the political character of citizenship, such as, for example, the element of citizen participation in political life. The result is a package of special rights granted to the citizen, not a status generating an open variety of rights and duties.
Initially, the issue of European citizenship was treated with great caution both by the institutions and by lawyers. The recent case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union has demonstrated the growing role of the institution, which seems destined to win first place in the Community legal order. European rules apply equally to all European citizens, so no action is needed to be entitled to equal treatment.
The institution of citizenship of the Union is significantly amended by the Treaties of Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon. The changes focus mainly on two aspects: the easing of the concept of citizenship as a set of individual special rights, introduced by the Maastricht Treaty, and the relationship between Union citizenship and national citizenship.
As for the first manoeuvre, unlike the Maastricht Treaty, which set out a specific set of rights for European citizens, the current article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) sets out a non-exhaustive, illustrative list of rights that may derive from European citizenship. This brings us closer to the notion of citizenship as an open and extended status.
The relationship between European citizenship and national citizenship, however, is deciphered differently by the Amsterdam Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty. The first stressed the central role of national citizenship, stating that "citizenship of the Union complements and does not replace national citizenship". The subsequent Treaty of Lisbon, differently, attests that "citizenship of the Union is added to and does not replace national citizenship", giving European citizenship progressive growth and autonomy.
Derivative character is one of the main inequalities between Union citizenship and national citizenship: the European Union does not independently define the requirements necessary for the acquisition of its citizenship, but it leaves the assessment to the Member States. This is due to the non-State nature of the European Union and therefore to the preservation of the sovereignty of the Member States.
In the list of rights related to citizenship of the European Union present in articles 18 - 25 TFEU appear civil rights and political rights, but no social rights are mentioned. This absence is due to the division of competencies between the European Union and the Member States: article 135 TFEU appears, in fact, that the Union merely has a supporting role in the action of the Member States in the field of social policy. Although the whole of Chapter IV of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Union is devoted entirely to solidarity and social rights, the subject of social benefits remains national. The management of social policy and benefits implies that the paying agency has sufficient resources and therefore has fiscal capacity. The European Union has a limited budget and is financed almost entirely by contributions from the Member States, so it does not have the resources to fulfil this role.
Supporting the development of European citizenship to move ever closer to the culture of belonging and eliminating existing forms of discrimination will be issues of importance for the European Union as a whole and for each individual Member State in the coming decades. The feeding of all the evolutionary processes aimed at the intensification of the bond and integration of the European Union must not be suspended, especially in critical times such as the present one.
Translated by Cristiana Azoitei
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Sources:
Trattato sul funzionamento dell’Unione europea
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:12012E/TXT
Trattato sull’Unione europea
Carta dei diritti fondamentali dell’Unione europea
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/charter/pdf/text_it.pdf
Trattato di Amsterdam
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/IT/TXT/?uri=CELEX:11997D/TXT
“L'Europa dei Cittadini: considerazioni e prospettive”, di Pietro Adonnino, in cvce.eu
“Altiero Spinelli: un federalista instancabile”, in europa.eu
“Riflessioni in tema di cittadinanza europea e diritti umani”, di Antonio Papisca, per “Pace diritti umani - Peace Human Rights, 1/2004”, in unipd-centrodirittiumani.it
Sito ufficiale dell’Unione europea: europa.eu
Sito dell’european union agency for fundamental rights: fra.europa.eu
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L'Autore
Melissa Cortese
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europe European Union cittadinanza citizenship Unione Europea Diritti europeo