[MUSIC] I'm pleased to introduce you to my colleague from the University of Groningen, Dimitry Kochenov. Dimitry is a professor of European constitutional law and a world expert in citizenship and the free movement of persons. By the way, he is also a world traveler himself. I cannot therefore think of a better person to share with you an insight into what citizenship is today, and what this entails in the European Union and beyond. >> Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Dimitry Kochenov and I'm here to discuss what it means to be a European citizen. On a new European passport, there is always a line on top of the cover, Union EuropÃenne, European Union, just like this one. These are not empty words. This is recognition that you are European, not merely in the sense of the town you live in or the food you are used to. You are European in the eyes of the law. European is part of your legal heritage. What does it mean at all? I'm here to suggest a glimpse of an answer. As I will show, this is a heritage that does not only enlarge your horizons. And can empower you everyday. It also reshapes our states. When citizenship is mentioned many things come to mind. Some might think, of running in parliamentary elections. Others the pride when your national football team wins against some rival teams, queuing for food stamps, or even dying for one's country, while mutilating the citizens of some other place. The whole world is divided into states, each of them determining who its citizens are, and what rights and duties they will have. The European Union, although not a state, is not an exception at all. Yet, as I will show, the way how it sets essential functions is exceptional in many respects. Citizenship is thus, not only about your eventual feelings of attachment or even pride. It is also about duties and responsibilities. Say, your state punishes you for not joining in the army for a war that is meaningless to you. It is also about rights of course. Indeed, to an iconic thinker citizenship has the right to have rights. Without public authority on our side. The one that recognizes you as a citizen, you will be surprised how little of humanity is left. Besides the status as such, and rights and duties associated therewith, citizenship is also about equality. It is equality between citizens that makes the status possible. John is obese, and Hannah's thin, Elizabeth is a queen, and Betty's serving a life prison sentence. Peter is a professor at Oxford, and Paul is quite a silly man honestly. Yet, all of them are citizens. Rather than being attentive to important personal traits, citizenship is precisely about ignoring them. Equality between citizens is thus only possible through what we call a legal fiction. A person who is unique, becomes a citizen equal to all the rest. What is the reason for this? This makes the political community possible, of course. One person, one vote, is much more easily acceptable than deciding who will be valued more. The rich, the beautiful, the educated, or those who's faith in the most popular god at the moment is purer. Humans have tested plenty of those approaches, all of which had failed to produce equitable results. This is our John, not quite the smart man, and absolutely not handsome, he's citizen of some European country, how do you become one? The rule is very simple, the state can proclaim virtually anything it wants, this is the law. Examples are plentiful, and interesting. You can of course be born to a particular place. The particular parents. You can trace your heritage back to 1492. Or simply buy citizenship. Hurry up, the price there on Malta citizenship has gone up two times from 650,000 Euros last Christmas. A state can also decide that it doesn't want foreign professors. How do you go about this one? Well, you can proclaim that being a professor, will mean being a citizen. Once you're appointed a professor in Austria for instance, your Austrian passport is in the mail. Random citizenship assignment, is not something to be upset about. Since the key function of citizenship, as a legal status, is exclusion. The authority in charge of a territory takes a decision on who belongs, and who does not belong. It is not important at all how it justifies such a decision. Malta needs money. Someone's great great grandfather was Greek. Someone who is a good football player. Or was born to the right, or indeed wrong family or place. Citizenship is a lottery. It's essence is quasi fertile, and this is a fact. So, who decides who deserves European citizenship? In the European Union, the random decisions regarding citizenship are left to the Member States to take. The Treaty's quite clear on this matter. The EU citizens are those who are nationals of the Member States of the European Union. This implies derivation. The European Union respects national decisions, relying on member states democratic outcomes. Malta sells passports, the EU respects this. As you can have guessed there are some buts here. The first concerns, the recognition of national citizenship. Why doesn't the nationality established that in order to recognize a foreign citizenship states. Its states can check whether there is actually a link between the citizen and the state of the passport on which the citizen is traveling. Such checks are prohibited by the European Union. What would be the reason? Let's pause for this question. I encourage you to think why the European Union, like international law, prohibits checks at verifying whether there is an actual link between a given EU national. Let's say a french individual, and the state of the passport. The answer to this question is quite simple. If contextualized within the EU game. If your main principle, besides randomness, is free movement the lack of a correlation between a nationality on the one side, and lasting ties with the policy. On the other, is a testimony of the success of the project, rather than a sign of a problem. You bought a passport of Cyprus, fine. Welcome to France. The second such check concerns the rules of nationality as such. The member states cannot ignore the fact That they confer EU citizenship together with their nationality when making decisions. Even the crook can be protected. the EU court told us this is logical. Since as we will see, EU citizenship comes with important rights, ignoring the union dimension. When a national decision is taken, will those be incoherent? To sum up, while acquisition of EU citizenship is something the member states will be deciding on, they have to take your law into account. Our John is thus claimed by two powers, his state and the European Union. Each of John's statuses of citizenship, the national and the European one, Comes with important citizenship rights. Which of these are citizenship rights? Think about it. At the national level, the key citizenship rights include residence in the territory, work, non-discrimination, political participation including local and national elections. Besides John enjoys consular protection abroad. If you do tick this, you're absolutely right. Concerning other rights, these are not citizenship rights, strict of sense. They depend on residency or other factors, and they're thus open to all non-citizens too. Or at least some of those. So much for Johns'rights. It was those related to his citizenship. What does he get as a European? In fact, EU citizenship grants him those same rights, residence, work, non-discrimination, political participation, counselor protection abroad. European citizenship thus behaves exactly like national citizenship in this respect. What is then the difference. Two essential points have to be made. Firstly, EU citizenship rights are not derivative in essence. Thus, this has to do with the territorial nature of the sovereignty of any state. The UK can not authorise It's nationals to work in Estonia. And Romania cannot establish a right for Romanians to reside in Ireland. The EU however can do precisely this for it's citizens. EU citizenship is thus conceptually different from the nationalities member states. Although derivative, in terms of inquisition, citizenship is clearly an autonomous concept in terms of substance. To quote advocate general Piers Maduro, this is exactly, the reality I describe. Secondly, it follows that EU citizenship transcends the national boundaries, multiplying the majority of transition, traditional rights of citizenship by 28 times. The added value is thus, not that of novelty but that of scale. This point has overwhelming implications for the fortunes of the nationals of the member states of the European Union. Since, these are small or medium-sized states. Having a right to work in Greece, which is a tiny country in the terrible economic situation is one thing. And having the right to work in the EU an internal market of half a billion EU citizens with several growing regions, is absolutely different. Or consider consular protection. If you're Maltese, your country has embassies in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington. That's it, I'm afraid. What if your beautiful passport got stolen in Accra, Ghana. As in the EU system, you're entitled to help from consular presentation of any member state. In practice, of course, it will be France or the UK. But even, even if you're a national of a relatively large European nation The added value is obvious. Even if you will never move to Romania, knowing that you could is obviously a good thing. Notice that I didn't mention the proverbial Free Movement Right which is fictionalized by other lectures and does include in the treaties. Work and residency anywhere in the territory of the union reflects the essence of what the EU refers to as the Free movement better, it seems to me. When an Italian family moves from Palermo to Catania, we do not speak about any free movement right. Why should it suddenly appear, and as they move from, say Catania to Malta. They're Europeans at home in the union, something even David Cameron can probably understand
