* * *
What does it mean to be a citizen of the European
Union? The question cuts right to the heart of the project of re-locating
state authority at level of the supranational European Union.
On one hand, the dream seems to have failed to capture the European imagination. The World Cup's old national rivalries and the opaque voting patterns that play-out each year at the Eurovision Song Contest tell the story of a stubborn identification with the nation state. European Union leaders were relieved to see that voter turnout in last spring's European election did not follow the decades-old trend of declines. But turnout held steady at a mere 43%, leaving Guy Verhofstadt to celebrate the fact that “We have finally broken the downward trend of falling participation in European elections."
On the other hand, European citizenship resonates in its way, as any of us who wearily queue in the long, slow-moving "All Nationalities" or "All Other Passport" lines at European airports know all too well. And the Internet is bursting with offers to sell EU citizenship for the pricy sum of GBP 150,000 (the market seems to be most active in Malta and Bulgaria).
Patricia Mindus of Uppsala University has assembled a special issue on European Citizenship - marking the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the concept in the Maastricht Treaty - that treats the question in all its complexity. Prof. Mindus explains that "Much has happened in and across the EU since Union citizenship was first introduced. Though many question its value, few advocate its irrelevance. This special issue takes stock of how EU citizenship has evolved over the last two decades and what ideas it conveys into the future." The German Law Journal is very pleased to publish this impressive collection.
On one hand, the dream seems to have failed to capture the European imagination. The World Cup's old national rivalries and the opaque voting patterns that play-out each year at the Eurovision Song Contest tell the story of a stubborn identification with the nation state. European Union leaders were relieved to see that voter turnout in last spring's European election did not follow the decades-old trend of declines. But turnout held steady at a mere 43%, leaving Guy Verhofstadt to celebrate the fact that “We have finally broken the downward trend of falling participation in European elections."
On the other hand, European citizenship resonates in its way, as any of us who wearily queue in the long, slow-moving "All Nationalities" or "All Other Passport" lines at European airports know all too well. And the Internet is bursting with offers to sell EU citizenship for the pricy sum of GBP 150,000 (the market seems to be most active in Malta and Bulgaria).
Patricia Mindus of Uppsala University has assembled a special issue on European Citizenship - marking the 20th anniversary of the introduction of the concept in the Maastricht Treaty - that treats the question in all its complexity. Prof. Mindus explains that "Much has happened in and across the EU since Union citizenship was first introduced. Though many question its value, few advocate its irrelevance. This special issue takes stock of how EU citizenship has evolved over the last two decades and what ideas it conveys into the future." The German Law Journal is very pleased to publish this impressive collection.
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