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Task 1. Read the text “European Citizenship” and translate it.






Task 2. Find the answers to the following questions in the text:

1. What is the modern meaning of the word “citizen”?

2. What are the rights of citizens of the Union?

3. Do citizens of EU have extensive social rights?

4. Why may the citizenship of the European Union be described as post-national?

5. What rights are non-citizens deprived of in EU?

 

European citizenship

The word “citizen” has only recently been used to refer to those who live and work in the countries making up the European Union. Before the Maastricht Treaty was ratified in 1993, the main reference was to “workers, ” economic cooperation being the chief concern. The lan­guage of citizenship represents a further step toward a supranational European state with an explicit focus on political union. The Maastricht Treaty created citizens of Europe, stating, “Every citizen holding the nationality of a member state shall be a citizen of the Union”. It further stated that the four fundamental freedoms – of movement of goods, persons, services, and capital – previously attached to citizenship of a member state were to be rights of citizens of the Union. They remained the same as they were before in virtually every other respect, though the treaty also created some new citizenship rights. The most important are undoubtedly political rights; those citizens of the Union who are resident in a member state of which they are not a national now have the right to vote and stand for election in local elections and for the European Parliament. Significantly, they still have no rights with regard to national elections. There are also new rights for all residents of the EU, including non-citizens, to petition the European Parliament concerning maladministration of its institutions. Social rights remain minimal at the EU level. Previous attempts to standardize benefits and rights for workers across nations are continued in the Maastricht Treaty, but social rights are extended very little beyond participation in the labor market. The emphasis on ensuring the free movement of workers remains and there is no attempt to harmonize national welfare systems.

The question of the extent to which citizenship of the European Union may be described as post-national is not a simple one. Citizenship rights remain clearly national in some respects. EU citizenship is granted only to those who are nationals of member states and the decision about who to include is made at the national level. Nation-states retain the power to divide those who are resident in their territories into European citizens, with all the freedoms of the Union, and non-citizens, who will not have the automatic right to travel or work in other countries within Europe. The link between nationality and citizenship is reproduced rather than undermined in the current conception of European citizenship. Furthermore, rights will continue to be assured by nation-states, and the European Union has only limited power to make member states comply with its rulings. The European Union has an inte­grated legal system but, as Elizabeth Meehan has pointed out, there is a plurality of legal instruments within the common legal order, each of which works differently at different levels. The European Parliament, Council, and Commission act jointly to make regulations which are directly applicable in member states.

 

UNIT 7






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