European Citizenship

European Union citizenship is a novel and complex legal status. Since its formal conception in the Maastricht Treaty, EU citizenship has catalysed an extraordinary, and ongoing, legal experiment, the development and implications of which are traced comprehensively throughout this book. EU Citizenship Law articulates, explains, and analyses the legal framework and legal developments that have shaped the status of EU citizenship and the rights that it confers on Member State nationals. By examining how the rights and responsibilities produced by EU citizenship relate to other rights conferred by EU law, the distinctive meaning and scope - the added legal value - of EU citizenship is uncovered. But the legal story examined here sits in deeper and wider economic, political, social, and emotional contexts because EU citizenship is also an idea: a vector of European integration, collective personhood, and multi-layered identities that reflects the paradoxically inclusive and exclusive qualities of citizenship more generally. EU citizenship challenges us to consider the worth and deepen the protection of the person, and to shape a European Union where principles and values really matter. Thorough yet accessible, this work provides a comprehensive legal reference point for the progression of debates about what EU citizenship law actually 'is,' and for the continuing study and practice of EU citizenship law.

For the decade up to 2020, the Republic of Cyprus opened a route to naturalisation and citizenship by investment for non-nationals who wanted access to the EU - many of them wealthy Russians who had profited from the post-Soviet era. The magnitude of the phenomenon is staggering. Thousands of Russian, Chinese, and other investors became Cypriots by buying properties - and therefore passports - on the island. The 'EU passport' became the country's major export, and the city of Limassol changed dramatically to accommodate the skyscrapers ('passport towers') built on the seafront. This book shows how a national passport becomes a global commodity, and unpacks the complex implications on the ground and in the EU. It interrogates the golden passports' right of money (jus pecuniae), which complicates existing citizenship structures associated with ancestry and territory. Examining the mobility of international elites, the ethnography contributes an original angle to migration studies, as golden passports suggest that citizenship has become a tool for the mobility of the rich. Through close engagement with the situation in Cyprus, Passport island shows how the global market for passports is tied up with economic crises, migration, property, inequality, and European politics. The book argues that the commodification of citizenship represents a new form of offshoring by other means.

The monograph aims to verify the thesis that the language rights of European Union citizens are an important element of the EU's respect for the national identities of its Member States guaranteed in the Treaties. The protection of these rights has been consistently strengthened in EU law, with citizenship of the Union playing an important role in this process. The formulated thesis is verified mainly through the use of the dogmatic and legal methods, and the comparative legal method. The specific nature of the subject matter discussed requires an interdisciplinary approach, and the methods used in the field of linguistics are also applied mainly with reference to the conceptual apparatus adopted within the EU legal order.