BEUCITIZEN

All Rights Reserved? Barriers towards EUropean CITIZENship

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The European Court of Justice expects European citizenship to become the fundamental status of nationals of the Member States. It ‘lies at the heart of the European integration process’. The treaties, legislation, and case law have given Europeans an increasing number of rights. Yet the European Commission complains that these remain underused. Therefore, it has included in FP7 a call for a large-scale IP, identifying and analyzing ‘barriers’ to exercising such European citizenship rights. Utrecht University is initiating a response to this call. In its project proposal it identifies research questions and several categories of potential hindrances as answers to some of them: contradictions between different rights, ‘multilevel’ rights, and differences in priorities Member States accord these rights; differences in political, administrative, and legal institutions; financial restraints; lack of sufficient solidarity; administrative and bureaucratic hurdles; language problems; and other practical barriers to claiming and exercising rights - and related duties. Furthermore we distinguish citizenship rights by the types of rights - economic, social, political, and civil - and by the ascribed characteristics of the subjects of these rights: male and female, young and old, native and immigrant. We believe multidisciplinarity will help in identifying and analyzing barriers to the exercise of European citizenship. We can learn from other times and places; therefore we add a historical and comparative dimension to the analysis. And we aim to combine insights from the historical, legal, and social sciences. Overall we want to investigate the options for a multilayered citizenship true to the EU's motto 'In Varietate Concordia'. The research questions and theoretically identified barriers will be investigated in 12 different work packages, each containing specific research objectives, tasks, roles of the participants, and deliverables'

Introduzione (Teaser)

European citizenship is at the core of the European integration process, yet the rights afforded to nationals in the Member States either remain underused or are subject to multiple barriers. An EU-funded research project is responding to a Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) call to identify and analyse barriers to exercising European citizenship rights.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The project http://beucitizen.eu/ (BEUCITIZEN) (All Rights Reserved? Barriers towards European citizenship) is geared towards highlighting options for a multi-layered citizenship true to the EU's motto 'unity in diversity'. Team researchers have identified research questions and outlined categories of potential hindrances to help answer these questions and to come up with suggestions how barriers to the exercise of EU citizenship rights can be overcome.

Areas of study include contradictions between different rights, multi-level rights and differences in priorities on the part of Member States; differences in political, administrative and legal institutions; financial restraints; administrative and bureaucratic hurdles; and language problems.

The project distinguishes citizenship rights according to type (economic, social, political and civil; the horizontal dimension) and categories of citizens (male/female, young/old, native/immigrant; the vertical dimension). Boasting a group of almost 80 scholars from different disciplines and backgrounds, the consortium comprises 26 universities and institutes from 19 EU countries. BEUCITIZEN's multidisciplinary approach includes a historical and comparative dimension and considers insights from the historical, legal, political and social sciences as well as economics and philosophy.

Beyond its legal or constitutional dimensions, citizenship is considered in terms of its interdependence between rules and practices, the influence of societal and political processes, and its multidimensionality.

Initial activities included an Open Forum debate that provided valuable input on the European Commission's 'EU Citizenship Report 2013'. This also made the project known to a larger group of interested parties. Work has been divided across 12 work packages, with a focus on bridging theory and empirical work.

Team members produced a paper elaborating the original research design, with 10 cross-cutting topics pegged to make up chapters in the planned book 'All rights reserved? Constraints and contradictions of European citizenship'. This work will offer a synthesis of the main findings once the project is completed.

A framework has been established for analysing case studies related to rivalling citizenship claims, and various reports produced on topics such as different categories of citizens and balancing citizenship of insiders and outsiders.

BEUCITIZEN is advancing knowledge on whether and how identified barriers can be overcome. The analysis and findings will underline future opportunities and challenges faced by the EU and Member States in further developing the idea and reality of EU citizenship.