In our European Foundation briefings on the Lisbon Treaty [Article 8, TEU], we focused on how the European Union’s citizenship is reognised as “additional to national citizenship.” This provision creates dual citizenship for each individual. However, since there is not a European demos, the Union will never have the same legitimacy, loyalty or respect from each Member State’s citizens as they have towards their own state.
The concept of EU citizenship is a widely criticised notion – states have citizens, and since no provision has been made to ensure that the European Union is recognised as a legal state within Europe, it should not have citizens or citizenship. Even if EU citizenship is enforced, the peoples of Britain should not be legally obliged to obey it.
Up until now, nobody could be a citizen of a state but under the Lisbon Treaty each citizen of each Member State will become a citizen of the Union. An EU citizenship implies certain Euro-centric rights and duties, yet each Member State citizen already has different national rights, obligations and duties to the state and between individuals. It is clear that the citizens of each Member State will have to respect the Union as a higher authority than their own states. Moreover, it seems, the legal rights and duties inherent to Union citizenship will be given primacy in cases of conflict with the ones of the national state since the Union law has become legally superior.
The various peoples of Europe do not trust the European institutions, nor should they want to swear loyalty to it, unless they seek identification with the creation of a European demos. Although it is said that EU citizenship will not replace national citizenship – under Article 17 – what is meant by that abstraction? When EU citizenship is prioritised and enforced, will that then mean that British citizens can now have British passports, and claim British rights and claim to be judged by the British judiciary under British law. No it will not. They will be forced to accept that they have become legally-defined EU citizens above and beyond their outmoded British citizenship. I point that out because by the debate in this country, the importance of that provision has been displaced.
Recent Comments