Symposium on the Reconceptualisation of European Union Citizenship

• Author: Dora Kostakopoulou,Cristina Gortázar‐Rotaeche,Elspeth Guild
• Published date: 01 July 2014
• Date: 01 July 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12092

Symposium on the Reconceptualisation of

European Union Citizenship

Dora Kostakopoulou,* Elspeth Guild** and

Cristina Gortázar-Rotaeche***

The articles in this symposium stem from stimulating discussions on European Union

citizenship which took place in the context of a Jean Monnet Multilateral Research

Group project funded by the European Commission (2010–2012). The main aim of

the project was to examine convergence and divergence between the practices of EU

citizenship in certain Member States and the ‘EU citizenship norm’, that is, the

requirement of equal treatment irrespective of nationality. It was built on three

streams, namely identity, nationality and European Union citizenship (coordinated by

Cristina Gortázar-Rotaeche); mobility, equality and social rights (coordinated by

Elspeth Guild) and security of residence for EU citizens before and after the Directive

2004/38 (coordinated by Dora Kostakopoulou), and the three articles here reflect

these streams.

Three Jean Monnet workshops were held in Madrid, Nijmegen and Manchester,

respectively, which provided the fora for the exploration of ideas about the past,

present and future of EU citizenship and its place in the European Union edifice.

Early career, mid-career and established researchers delivered insightful papers, most

of which have found home in an edited volume.1Although it is impossible to do

justice to the richness and wide-ranging content of the work presented, it might be,

nevertheless, of interest to distil some common postulates from these discussions.

First, researchers noted that EU citizenship has been, and continues to be, an

experimental institution that changes traditional conceptions of ‘who we are’ and

‘how we should live with others’ in freedom and non-discrimination. There have not

been many institutions regionally and globally that have had the capacity to trans-

form ‘enemies’, ‘aliens’, ‘migrants’ or ‘others’ into fellow EU citizens and rights

holders in a common geopolitical space in such a short period of time. EU citize-

nship’s normative core of equal treatment and its tendency towards larger and more

enriched associative experiences cannot but create frictions in national statist arenas

and, quite often, an ideological resistance to recognise EU citizens as co-citizens and

holders of a right to equal treatment. In this respect, the meaning and scope of EU

citizenship often oscillate between res factae and res fictae. It would be suffice to

mention two exemplars here. First, free movement and residence in the EU have been

* Dora Kostakopoulou, School of Law, University of Warwick;

** Eslepth Guild, Centre of Migration Law, University of Nijmegen;

*** Cristina Gortasar, Faculty of Law, Universidad Pontificia Comillas.

1E. Guild, C. Gortázar Rotaeche and D. Kostakopoulou (eds), The Reconceptualisation of EU Citizenship

(Leiden, 2014).

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European Law Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4, July 2014, pp. 444–446.

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA