Rethinking the Union from the perspective of European citizenship

The Conference on the Future of Europe, promoted by Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen, has at least the potential to invite us to rethink critically and constructively what our unity means today in a world as global, multipolar, decentralised and complex as the one we live in. Since the failed attempt of the so-called Constitutional Treaty of A Constitution for Europe - and the wreckage was salvaged quite satisfactorily with the Treaty of Lisbon - different attacks have hindered an in-depth reflection that would unite all Europeanism, (from the looser classical and state currents to the more federalist ones), in response to the attacks of anti-European radicalism embodied by the different identitarian and populist forces, which are much more coordinated among themselves and with the Union's historical enemies than we think we are aware of. In a phase of accelerated healing of the wounds opened, (i) by the austerity policies (austericide? ) of the Union in the face of the financial crisis, (ii) the onslaught of Brexit and its consequences, and (iii) the global health and socio-economic pandemic caused by Covid-19; now, with an impressive programme of economic reactivation promoted by Europe, euro-vaccinated and hopeful, it is a good time to start, with the Orteguian attitude of El Espectador, -perhaps prodigiously seated and centred in the mountains of El Escorial, thanks to the Complutense University's Summer Courses-, to start reflecting and rethinking Europe, our Europe, the Union's Europe, once again.

European citizenship, born in the heat of the debates of the Maastricht Intergovernmental Conferences, and at the initiative of the Spanish delegation of the then government of Felipe González, conceptually means and contributes much more than we appreciate, and beyond the literalness that it implies, in my opinion, it has an enormous cohesive and driving potential for the future of our Union.

Indeed, born as an addition to the nationality reserved exclusively for those who were already nationals of a Member State of the Union, European citizenship included a set of rights and articulated a set of possibilities for their effective exercise. Symbolically, it signified the overcoming of the Europe-market, exclusively centred on economic freedoms and the liberalisation of the factors involved in production - people (workers), goods and capital - in order to consolidate a political condition additional to the bond of nationality, which, beyond its concrete virtualities, was loaded with symbolism, our belonging to a broad body of the most advanced welfare democracies in the world. Beyond freedom of movement and residence, in my opinion, the real contribution lay in two specific aspects, diplomatic-consular assistance in third countries and, above all, the right to vote - active and passive suffrage - in municipal (and European) elections, in the place of residence.

In my opinion, this is one of the great contributions to political thought at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. Citizenship, born as the set of political rights, and especially the possibility of being a voter and eligible to vote, and therefore having full political rights in the community of which one is a member. The concept of citizenship, born in the wake of the British, American and especially the French revolutions, closely linked the idea of citizenship to that of nationality, and irremediably circumscribed the fullness of political rights in a community to membership of that community through the prior bond of nationality. Thus, citizenship was born, irremediably associated, -irremediably marked, irremediably wounded-, with nationality. Being a national conferred full rights and the status of citizenship. In a certain way, citizenship was born irremediably linked to the contradiction with the foreigner, with the Meteco, with the Gentile, ...with the one who is not one of us, with the one who is not part of our community and therefore we cannot grant him full powers, in the form of rights, to determine the future of it (ours). This primordial link between citizenship and nationality has remained unassailable throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, leading to many confusions between the two concepts and often being the source of inappropriate side-effects. 

For the first time with the Treaty on European Union, with all the symbolic, political and referential importance it entailed, the idea of citizenship was separated from the idea of nationality. It is true that it was still inexorably linked to having the nationality of one of the Member States, but for the first time, in a significant way, the emphasis was placed on residence and not on nationality.

Irrespective of nationality - and I repeat, of one of the Member States of the Union - it is residence which determines citizenship, in other words the right to vote and to stand as a candidate in local elections, which is the key element of citizenship. Irrespective of other issues, in my view, the political discourse is extremely powerful: those who are part of a political community are those who reside there with a certain vocation of permanence. Some speak of a multicultural citizenship, or of a transnational citizenship, or of a new citizenship... I like to speak of a republican citizenship, of a European citizenship that commits the resident to the public space, to the proper functioning of the commons, to its open and plural, tolerant public spaces, while at the same time committed to the well-being of all. And this implies the emergence of local Europe, of the city, of the cives, of the civic, of citizens as a structuring element of Europe.

In the face of the essentialist nation, which has confronted us, divided us and is part of the tragic history and learning of Europe, the city emerges as the cosmopolitan cradle of democratic coexistence and liberal tolerance, as the affirmation that all those who live in it are full citizens who decide together on their political present and future; A declaration of principles in the face of essentialist identitarianism and illiberal policies, and also as a basis and a stepping stone for the construction of a stronger, more united Europe and for citizens to feel more involved in it.

It may be argued against this idea of a Fortress Europe, not always with immigration policies that meet humanitarian requirements, but I invite us to understand European citizenship as a transcendence of the logics of statist political realism so that we can propose new scenarios in accordance with our values, certainly with the realism that the context allows us to do so.

I am convinced of the need to extend and reinforce the existing rights that make up the status of citizenship of the Union, while at the same time thinking of new elements that link existing policies to citizenship - the European area of higher education, research and innovation, digital rights, Erasmus, consumers, professional practice, etc. -; and with an additional task of political imagination to make citizenship of the Union the most solid possible foundations of the building that we have been constructing since 1950, and which will not be built all at once, as Robert Shuman said, but which must be done. The barbarians are always camped on the outskirts of the city waiting for their chance; we, in the heart of Europe, more citizens, more united and stronger in a Europe that incorporates into its area of security, justice and freedom a broad area of well-being and citizenship, as the answer to the very rabid counter-attacks that we will have to resist.

Dr. Santiago J. Castella Surribas, Professor of International Public Law and International Relations at Rovira i Virgili University, Full Member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors, and currently Senator of the Socialist Parliamentary Group for Tarragona.