Toothless European Citizenship / Šimon Uradnik

assess the sufficiency or lack of exclusivity, it is appropriate to compare the wording at issue with others of a similar nature. These are not far away as those compared may be the provisions enshrining the rights of Union citizens. By argumentum a contrario to: ‘Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights and be subject to the duties provided for in the Treaties.’, 242 one must come to the conclusion that every other person, who is not a citizen of the Union, shall not enjoy the rights and not be subject to the duties. 243 The phrasing of the latter cited legal provision constituting rights is as exclusive as the wording of the former legal provision establishing the status. Ergo, by argumentum per analogiam , just as no person other than a Union citizen has the rights of a Union citizen, so no person other than a national of a Member State is a citizen of the Union. 244 For these reasons, it is reasonable to claim that the legal title for the termination of the legal relationship of Union citizenship exists and is included in the wording itself. Through this lens, the first premise has been refuted, and the second confirmed. Wherefore, ius tractum is the legal title, again. It firstly demarcates the circle of addressees — Union citizens since the form-status has to exist first to terminate once, it secondly defines legally relevant circumstances — ‘nonpossession’ of the Member State’s nationality, and it thirdly enshrines legal effect — termination of the legal relationship of Union citizenship. The legal title is subsequently that ‘non-possession’ of the Member State’s nationality, which must be categorised as an unlawful legal status since it is the situation which is objectively contrary to the law as the law provided for and stipulated the exact opposite. At the point when the legal title intersects with the legal fact, the public legal relationship of Union citizenship terminates, as a result of which an individual loses his or her citizenship of the Union. In this context, the formstatus of Union citizenship at the point of the 242 Consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union [2012] OJ 326/47, article 20 paragraph 2. 243 Unless acquis communautaire states that the specific right is not exclusively for Union citizens, but it enshrines it also for others. Such rights would be, exempli gratia , the right to good administration, the right of access to documents, the right to refer to the European Ombudsman, and the right to petition the European Parliament. Other persons are also entitled to them but only on the basis that there is another legal provision which states so. But all other rights enshrined in Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU are only granted upon Union citizens. 244 M. Svobodová shares the same conclusion. To that effect, see Magdaléna Svobodová, Občanství Evropské Unie (Auditorium 2021) 271.

61