The Citizens of the Union and their rights
Consecrated by the Treaty establishing the European Community in its Article 17, European citizenship is the primary tool that assists the development of a European identity. The main difference with the citizenship of the Member States, that European citizenship completes, is that the rights granted to citizens are not yet matched with duties.
LEGAL BASIS
Articles 17 to 22 of the Treaty establishing the European Community (EC).
OBJECTIVES
Inspired by the freedom of movement for persons envisaged in the Treaties, the introduction of a European citizenship with precisely defined rights and duties was considered as long ago as the 1960s. Following preparatory work which began in the mid-1970s, the Treaty on European Union (TEU), adopted in Maastricht in 1992, gave as an objective for the Union ‘to strengthen the protection of the rights and interests of the nationals of its Member States through the introduction of a citizenship of the Union’. A new part of the EC Treaty (Articles 17 to 22) is devoted to this citizenship.
Like national citizenship, citizenship of the Union is intended to describe a relationship between the citizen and the European Union which is defined by the citizen’s rights, duties and political participation. This is intended to bridge the gap between the increasing impact of Community action on citizens of the Community, and the safeguarding of rights and duties and participation in democratic processes, which remains an almost exclusively national matter. The aim is to increase people’s sense of identification with the EU and to foster European public opinion, a European political consciousness and a sense of European identity.
Moreover, there is to be stronger protection of the rights and interests of Member States’ nationals (third indent of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union).
ACHIEVEMENTS
1. Definition of EU citizenship
According to Article 17 of the EC Treaty (the Treaty of Lisbon also makes provision for this definition to be included in Article 8 of the Treaty on European Union), every person holding the nationality of a Member State is a citizen of the Union. Nationality is defined according to the national laws of that State. Citizenship of the Union is complementary to national citizenship but does not replace it, and it comprises a number of rights and duties in addition to those stemming from citizenship of a Member State.
2. Substance of citizenship
For all citizens of the Union, citizenship implies:
— the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States (*2.3);
— the right to vote and to stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament and in municipal elections in the Member State in which they reside, under the same conditions as nationals of that State (*2.4);
— the right to diplomatic protection in the territory of a third country (non-EU state) by the diplomatic or consular authorities of another Member State, if their own country does not have diplomatic representation there, to the same extent as that provided for nationals of that Member State;
— the right to petition the European Parliament and the right to apply to the Ombudsman appointed by the European Parliament concerning instances of maladministration in the activities of the Community institutions or bodies. These procedures are governed by Articles 194 and 195 ECT (*1.3.14 and *2.5);
— the right to write to any Community institution or body in one of the languages of the Member States and to receive a response in the same language (Article 21, third paragraph, ECT);
— the right to access European Parliament, Council and Commission documents, subject to certain conditions (Article 255 ECT).
The Treaty of Lisbon further emphasises the principal rights of citizens of the Union by listing them in Article 17(2) of the ECT.
3. Scope
With the exception of electoral rights, the substance of Union citizenship achieved to date is to a considerable extent simply a systematisation of existing rights (particularly as regards freedom of movement, the right of residence and the right of petition), which have now been enshrined in primary law on the basis of a political idea.
By contrast with the constitutional understanding in European States since the French Declaration of Human and Civil Rights of 1789, no specific guarantees of fundamental rights are associated with citizenship of the Union. Article 6(2) of the Treaty on European Union states that the ‘Union’ will ‘respect’ fundamental rights in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights and the ‘constitutional traditions common to the Member States’, as general principles under Community law but it does not make any reference to the legal status of Union citizenship (for fundamental rights in the European Union, *2.1).
Union citizenship does not as yet entail any duties for citizens of the Union, despite the wording to that effect in Article 17(2) of the EC Treaty, which constitutes a major difference between it and citizenship of the Member States.
Article 22, second paragraph, ECT and Article 48 TEU provide opportunities to develop citizenship of the Union gradually and thus provide citizens of the Union with an enhanced legal status at European level. The Treaty of Lisbon also makes provision, in Article 8B of the Treaty on European Union, for a new right for citizens of the Union: ‘Not less than 1 million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties’.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
— In electing the European Parliament by direct suffrage, EU citizens are exercising one of their essential rights in the EU, that of democratic participation in the European political decision-making process.
— Parliament has always wanted to endow the institution of Union citizenship with comprehensive rights. It advocated the determination of Union citizenship on an autonomous Community basis, so that EU citizens would have an independent status. In addition, from the start it advocated the incorporation of fundamental and human rights into primary law and called for EU citizens to be entitled to bring proceedings before the Court of Justice when those rights were violated by EU institutions or a Member State (resolution of 21 November 1991).
— During the negotiations on the Treaty of Amsterdam, Parliament again called for the rights associated with EU citizenship to be extended, and it criticised the fact that the Treaty did not make any significant progress on the content of EU citizenship, with regard to either individual or collective rights. One of Parliament’s demands that is still outstanding is the adoption of measures by a qualified majority to implement the principle of equal treatment and ban discrimination (resolution of 11 June 1997). It should be noted, however, that since the Treaty of Amsterdam the co-decision procedure that applies to the measures has made it easier to exercise the rights associated with EU citizenship (Article 18(2)).
— In accordance with Parliament’s requests, the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe of 18 July 2003, drawn up by the Convention on the Future of Europe, stipulated that any natural or legal person may institute proceedings against an act addressed to that person or which is of direct and individual concern to him or her, and against a regulatory act which is of direct concern to him or her and does not entail implementing measures. This provision is reiterated in the Treaty of Lisbon.
Claire Genta
July 2008