Toothless European Citizenship / Šimon Uradnik

Such europaios demos would constitute and legitimise the European Union directly. 9 In that case, the author is of the opinion that such factual relation in the form of the genuine link could not be dissolved by any Member State as this factual relation would be of a straight nature. Applying the same logic, if the legal relationship of Union citizenship is of quality of the true autonomous form and nonvicarious content, the author dares to claim that such legal relation as the direct bond could not be severed by any action of any Member State by the very virtue of the autonomy and nonvicariousness. The Estonian national would, in such a case, lose the nationality of a Member State but not citizenship of the Union. Thus, the central research question is whether the essence of Union citizenship is the factual relation in the form of the genuine link, and whether the essence is the legal relation in the form of the subsequently developed concept of the direct bond. This monograph is divided into four main chapters. Chapter 1 provides the reader with fairly contextual and chronological research on the historical development of citizenship of the Union. Since the vast majority of scholarly research and writings have hitherto focused on the evolution of the content of Union citizenship — rights, the author deliberately emphasises on the history of the form, the status of citizenship of the Union to bring a rather new and coherent perspective. The research is partitioned by major milestones of the development in the form of the successively adopted treaties; wherefore, the chapter begins with the establishment of Union citizenship by the Treaty of Maastricht in 1993 and with problems attached to its enactment. It continues with the period of time after the Treaty of Amsterdam, which came into force in 1999. The third crucial milestone is consequently the era from the Constitution for Europe to the ‘Reform Treaty’, in this day and age known as the Treaty of Lisbon, which was in 2009. As no more treaties have been produced, the reins of the development have been left to the Court of Justice. 10 The entire evolution of the status of Union citizenship may be summarised in two subtitles — from derivativeness to complementarity to additionality — and — ‘from workers to movers to citizens’. 11 As for the methodology, this chapter stands mainly on the 9 As other demoi directly constitute and legitimise entities in the form of states. 10 Hereinbelow also referred to as ‘the Court’. 11 Willem Maas, ‘The Origins, Evolution, and Political Objectives of EU Citizenship’ (2014) German Law Journal 801 accessed 17 th June 2023.

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