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The Three Levels of Citizenship within the European Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Rainer Bauböck

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European Union citizenship is derived from Member State nationality. This fact often has been considered a “birth defect” to be overcome by either disconnecting EU citizenship from Member State citizenship or by reversing the relationship in a federal model so that Member State citizenship would be derived from that of the Union. I argue in this essay that derivative citizenship in a union of states can be defended as a potentially stable and democratically attractive basic feature of the architecture of the EU polity where EU citizenship is perceived of as one layer in a multi-level model of democratic membership in a union of states such as the EU. This perspective is not a defense of the status quo, but rather allows for—or even requires—a series of reforms addressing a number of inconsistencies and democratic deficiencies in the current citizenship regime.

Most academics writing about Union citizenship tend to compare it to that which they know best: Nation State citizenship. It then comes as no surprise when they conclude that the current construction of EU citizenship is internally incoherent, externally not sufficiently inclusive, and also lacking in democratic legitimacy. To a certain degree, I agree with this criticism; however, such authors often apply the wrong standard of comparison and therefore are likely to promote faulty solutions. As the EU Treaties clearly have spelled out since the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam, EU citizenship is complementary or additional to Member State nationality without replacing it. National citizenship is a constitutive element of EU citizenship and therefore cannot serve as an external standard of comparison.

Type
Special Issue EU Citizenship: Twenty Years On
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 5: Special Issue EU Citizenship: Twenty Years On , 01 August 2014 , pp. 751 - 763
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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3 See Bauböck, Rainer, Temporary Migrants, Partial Citizenship and Hypermigration, 14(5) Critical Rev. of Int'l Soc. & Pol. Phil. 665, 685 (2011).Google Scholar

4 This is a relatively recent development. Birthright citizenship in municipalities (Heimatrecht) in late 19th century Austria and Germany was used to restrict internal migration by denying poverty relief and access to local public services to citizens residing outside their municipality of birth. Switzerland's Bürgergemeinden, in which membership is acquired at birth, is a historical remnant of this system. Today's hukou system in the Peoples' Republic of China is an extreme case of local birthright citizenship as an instrument of exclusion from social welfare. This is based on ius sanguinis so that rural hukou status is even inherited by the second generation of migrant-descent born in cities.Google Scholar

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11 For a debate on this question, see Rainer Bauböck, Philippe Cayla & Catriona Seth, Should EU citizens living in other member states vote there in national elections? (RSCAS Working Paper No. 32, 2012), http://eudo-citizenship.eu/docs/RSCAS_2012_32.pdf.Google Scholar

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18 On 4 July 2012, the German Constitutional Court abolished the three-month German residence requirement for external voting in German elections. Bundesverfassungsgericht [BVerfG - Federal Constitutional Court], Case No. 2 BvC 1/11, 132 Entscheidungen des Bundesverfassungsgerichts [BVerfGE] 39 (Apr. 7, 2012). In the 2013 national elections, German citizens without prior residence in Germany could vote if they could demonstrate some familiarity with German politics and that they were affected by it, see http://www.konsularinfo.diplo.de/wahlen.Google Scholar

19 See Bauböck, Rainer, Stakeholder Citizenship and Transnational Political Participation: A Normative Evaluation of External Voting, 75(5) Fordham L. Rev. 2393, 2446 (2007).Google Scholar