The book The Reconceptualization of European Union Citizenship. is edited by Elspeth Guild, Cristina J. Gortázar Rotaeche and Dora Kostakopoulou, and was published with Brill Nijhoff in 2014.
About the book
This book maps out, from a variety of theoretical standpoints, the challenges generated by European integration and EU citizenship for community membership, belonging and polity-making beyond the state. It does so by focusing on three main issues of relevance for how EU citizenship has developed and its capacity to challenge state sovereignty and authority as the main loci of creating and delivering rights and protection. First, it looks at the relationship between citizenship of the Union and European identity and assesses how immigration and access to nationality in the Member States impact on the development of a common European identity. Secondly, it discusses how the idea of solidarity interacts with the boundaries of EU citizenship as constructed by the entitlement and capacity of mobile citizens to enjoy equality and social rights as EU citizens. Thirdly, the book engages with issues of EU citizenship and equality as the building blocks of the EU project. By engaging with these themes, this volume provides a topical and comprehensive account of the present and future development of Union citizenship and studies the collisions between the realisation of its constructive potential and Member State autonomy.
European Citizenship: Towards Renationalisation or Cosmopolitan Europe?
Espen D. H. Olsen in his chapter examines the meaning of EU citizenship from the perspective of the controversies of 2011/12 which reveal Member States' reluctance to accept that EU citizens are 'real' citizens or that their citizens are 'real' EU citizens. He traces and analyses policy decisions, legal reasoning, and political reactions of the Danish center-right government to suspend parts of the Schengen Agreement and re-instate border controls between Denmark and its neighbours, perhaps one of the most aggressive ways of refusing the coherence of citizenship. He then looks at the landmark Zambrano ruling of the CJEU where European citizenship was made less dependent on the principle of free movement and thereby bolstered as a fundamental status of itself. In analyzing these policy moments made at the time of recurring European crises, the chapter utilises an analytical framework focused on two polity models of the EU: one nation-state oriented and one cosmopolitan. The chapter seeks to hightlight how two different 'worlds' of citizenship politics are at play simultaneously. The question is whether we see more of 're-nationalisation' (Schengen case) or 'cosmopoliticization' (CJEU/Zambrano) in EU citizenship politics.
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Espen D. H. Olsen
‘European Citizenship: Towards Renationalization or Cosmopolitan Europe?'
In: The Reconceptualization of European Union Citizenship
Elspeth Guild, Cristina J. Gortázar Rotaeche and Dora Kostakopoulou (eds)
Brill Nijhoff, 2014
ISBN 978-90-04-25151-9