Publications

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In this paper we present the outline of a series of five teaching packages for secondary school pupils in the age group of 14-16/17. These teaching packages all address a specific dimension of EU citizenship. More attention for EU Citizenship is relevant for several reasons. It first refers to the set of civil, political, economic and social rights that all citizens of EU countries possess in addition to the rights that come with their national citizenship. Secondly, it refers to the membership of a European political community in which each citizen of an EU country can participate actively; next to or intertwined with, being active in a local or national political community.

One of the conclusions from a comparative study of civic education in 7 EU-countries (D8.10 bEUcitizen), is that adolescents are hardly educated in what their EU citizenship rights are, nor are they trained in competencies to realize or enforce these rights. Parallel to this, young adults leave secondary school without being taught the civic and political competencies to participate in the variety of political communities on different levels they belong to.

EU citizenship is relevant when you stay in your country of origin and in the town you grew up in. For instance, in one’s role as a consumer. Furthermore, political participation manifests itself on the local level in different forms. On the one hand, during elections: local, regional, national or European. On the other hand, in many forms of collective action by citizens who organize themselves in protest movements, around opinion leaders in the public sphere, interest groups and NGOs. Often when there is a European dimension, the action starts at the local level. For that reason, it is important that citizens both understand their rights and that a more lively European public sphere emerges. As a result, we choose to develop teaching materials for secondary school pupils that contribute to the EU dimension of their civic competencies.

With these teaching packages we do not intend to lobby for or create support for EU citizenship. Our goal is to make EU citizenship visible in a realistic way, showing concrete relevance not only for ‘movers’ but especially for those who stay at home; show how EU citizenship is directly related to one’s daily life and how one can influence these choices.

After having outlined the goals, target group and didactics, in the appendix a summary of the five teaching packages are presented:

Getting my rights: Europeanization at home
Lobbying and getting in touch with the EU
Organizing our interest
Travelling around
Advising the EU in solving Global Problems

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European Union (EU) citizenship is both about a legal status – a set of civil, social, economic and political rights complementing one’s national citizenship – and about being an active participating member of the EU political community. EU citizenship includes therefore influencing decisionmaking on rules, policies and practices that effect one’s own national and local societies. The opportunities and capacities to exercise these rights and to participate differ between countries, between groups and in time. Social, cultural and economic trends, national or regional crises, as well as national and EU policy responses to these trends and crises, create potentially new inequalities, new barriers, but possibly new opportunities too. Although we cannot predict the future, we can prepare ourselves for different thinkable futures. Through this study we intend to feed the discussion on what might happen with EU citizenship in different circumstances. Moreover, by doing so we also want to stimulate the discussion on what repertoires of action by which actors in what circumstances might protect, foster or boost EU citizenship in these alternative futures.

With that in mind, we conducted a scenario study. A scenario is a story about how the future might unfold for organizations, issues, nations or even for the world. The scenario method is originated in the military sphere and was adapted and further developed by consulting firms and companies in the 1950s and 1960s. Pioneering work was conducted in the 1970s by the oil company Shell (Meinert, 2014, p.8). According to Shell (2008, pp.12-19), a scenario study should be carried out to (1) confront assumptions, (2) recognise degrees of uncertainty, (3) widen perspectives, and (4) address dilemmas and conflicts. Over the years, many companies as well as public organisations and governments confronted with the necessity of long-term investment or strategic decisions in a rapidly changing environment followed Shell’s example and started to utilise scenarios for their strategy developments.

Based on the outcomes of the bEUcitizen project and five scenario workshops, we developed four thinkable future scenarios for how the EU, or the part of Europe which now is the EU, might look like in 12 to 15 years (and beyond). These scenarios are not predictions, preferences or forecasts for the future. The scenarios represent plausible, relevant and challenging possibilities, and are a starting point for thinking about possible implications for EU citizenship as well as repertoires of action. In the workshops more than sixty researchers, students and (young) professionals were engaged. Together we looked into how the future might unfold for EU citizenship: how might the world look like in 2030 and what could this mean for EU citizenship? Is it likely that EU citizenship will change, will become broader, more specific, and more exclusive or not survive at all? Who will be more or less vulnerable? What in those different situations should and can be done by whom to safeguard EU citizenship or the values it stands for? What repertoire of action is needed and/or is possible in different circumstances and who is able to perform these actions? In this report we present a synthesis of the insights gained from the scenario workshops as well as the outcomes of the bEUcitizen project.

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Authors: Tom Binder, Marco Inglese and Frans van Waarden

This deliverable analyses the impact of the European Ombudsman in the European Union’s democratic life through his power to investigate cases of maladministration committed by European institutions. Accordingly, this deliverable is structured as follows.

The first part is devoted to explore the creation of the European Ombudsman, the rationale behind his establishment, and the development of this ‘personalised’ body. The report then moves to an assessment of the European Ombudsman’s investigative powers, coupled with a specific focus on the relations with his national peers. This section then proceeds by highlighting quantitative data on the complaints lodged to the European Ombudsman since his creation.

The second part verifies whether the European Ombudsman constitutes a case of democratic empowerment. Indeed, an assessment of the European Ombudsman’s body of decisions shows that he is more and more acting not only as a ‘watchdog’ of European institutions but even of European agencies.

The third part provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the personal, geographical origin and subject matter of complaints complemented by the targets of inquiries. In particular, citizens of some States are more active than other in submitting a complaint, the Commission is still the most targeted institution, while the major allegation of maladministration pertains to access to documents and lack of transparency.

The fourth part investigates possible barriers that European citizens might encounter in lodging a complaint to the European Ombudsman. In this respect, considering the lack of locus standi before the European Ombudsman and the fact that the proceedings is free of charge and can be conducted in the language chosen by the applicant, we argue that there are no barriers to be overcome.

The fifth part, through an assessment of the few cases decided by the European Court of Justice and considering the specific relationship the European Ombudsman has with the Parliament, seeks to position him with the so-called trias politica.

In conclusion, this deliverable argues that the European Ombudsman has had and will have a positive impact on the democratic life of the European Union, has been successful in fostering the accountability of European institutions and will have a key role in monitoring future developments affecting European citizens.

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This report has been drafted within the context of work package (WP) 8 of the bEUcitizen project. This WP focuses on political rights and thus aims to elaborate on the perceived tension between economic rights and political rights of European Union (EU) citizens. The present report contributes to this aim by providing an analysis of the tension between EU competition law and so-called Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) initiatives. The term RBC refers to initiatives of private businesses that do not solely aim at making profit, but also aim to achieve a wider social goal, such as environmental protection, protection of animal welfare or combatting low wages. In order to be effective, these RBC-initiatives are often carried out in cooperation between different private firms. This cooperative nature renders many RBC initiatives problematic from a competition law perspective, which prohibits anti-competitive agreements between undertakings.

The current report first provides an in-depth overview of what the authors refer to as the ‘competition law problem’ that often hinders these RBC-initiatives. The report then reflects at a more fundamental level on this competition law problem using three different lenses, which allow the reader to gain insights from different theoretical angles. Section 3 of the report places the competition law problem within the wider academic and political discussion on the ‘dis-embeddedness’ or ‘decoupling’ of the economic dimension side of EU integration (also called ‘Market Europe’) from the social dimension of EU integration (also called ‘Social Europe’). Section 4 focuses on the position of private firms as political actors when engaging in RBC-initiatives. This section thus analyses the central issue for this report from the perspective of various theoretical outlooks on the (political) role of private firms, including the ethics of the firm and the notion of corporate citizenship. Subsequently, section 5 focuses on the vertical relationship between the EU member states and the EU, reflecting on the possibility of a divergence between the approaches pushed for at the European and national level respectively. In the analysis, the report focuses mostly on the Netherlands as the developments here seem to be at the forefront of this discussion. While the report thus provides a case-study, the analysis will also provide insights relevant within a wider context since the highlighted tensions stem from European law,.

The report concludes i.a. that the tension between EU competition law and RBC-initiatives correlates with more fundamental changes within society, most notably a shift in thinking about the place of ‘the firm’ in society. These changes have provided an impetus for the increased engagement with RBC. At the same time, non-economic public interests seem to remain foreign to EU competition law. Until now, institutions – such as the EU Commission and the Dutch national competition authority – remain largely unable to weigh these interests in their competition law analysis. On the basis of the analysis in the report, it is argued that this demonstrates the disembedded nature of EU competition law and provides an example of the rising asymmetry between so-called ‘Social Europe’ and ‘Market Europe’. It is stressed that this tension seems problematic and could in the long run greaten the tensions between the EU and its member states. The report finally concludes that the problem might be solved by merging legal and political solutions at both the European level and the national level of the EU member states. However, these possible solutions deserve further scholarly attention.

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The existing research on the Croatian citizenship defines several stages of the development of the Croatian citizenship regime (Ragazzi & Štiks 2009; Djuric 2010; Štiks 2010b; Koska 2011; 2012; Ragazzi, Štiks & Koska 2013; Baričević & Hoffman 2014). The first decade of Croatian independence was marked by the disputes over the status dimension of citizenship, where the criteria for the membership in the newly formed citizenry had to be defined. Within this stage, the generous provisions for the inclusion of ethnic Croats regardless their residency have been enacted, while the provisions for exclusion of certain categories of non-Croat ethnic residents were implemented. The second stage which literature perceives to have start in 2000 (Petričušić 2004; Jović & Lamont 2010; Djuric 2010; Štiks 2010b; Koska 2012) was marked by liberalization of the discussions over the rights dimension of Croatian citizenship. The final stage involves the changes and impact on the Croatian citizenship regime that emerged in the aftermath of the Croatian membership to EU. Since Croatia has been an EU member state for only three years, the exploration of the changes of the Croatian citizenship regime with the EU have not been addressed so far. The task of this study is to explore the key political debates that emerged in the context of the previous developments of the Croatian citizenship regime.

Throughout all three stages, idea of membership to EU played a very important role in Croatian project of nation and statehood building; during the 1990s it was perceived as a long term guarantee of Croatian sovereignty, statehood stability and economic prosperity. The 2000s until the accession were marked by democratic changes and the legislative reification of the discriminatory policies and shortcoming of the regime of the 1990s, which were largely influenced by the meeting the requirements of the EU accession, which was set as the primary national priority and goal. The last stage, which have started in the eve of the accession and continued till today, is marked by the return of the identity disputes regarding the Croatian state and the membership identity. As this report will highlight, the first three years of EU membership did not build on the previous decades’ accomplishments of more inclusionary policies towards minorities; instead, Croatia has witnessed the revival of the nationalist discourse which is today in the media often framed under the term ‘conservative revolution’.

For the full report click here.

Executive Summary: Lessons for the EU
1. Accommodating diversity by balancing the claims of constituent political entities and citizens
This report builds on the results of WP4 and provides a succinct summary of the deliverables D4.1 to D4.9 focussing on the lessons they contain for the European Union. The EU has followed a process that is similar to our case studies (Switzerland, Canada, Spain, Czechia, Turkey, Estonia, Croatia, Israel) yet a few things have to be borne in mind before drawing conclusions:
– There is no broad consensus on EU integration as state-building
– The time-span in which the EU has evolved is much shorter than our case studies
– The speed at which the EU has integrated is also much faster than our case studies
Our case studies reveal two fundamentally different paths of addressing diversity and delivering solutions to respond to the rivalling claims of different communities. A first path consists of emphasizing and protecting differences, while at the same time building a common set of values that encompasses all communities within the territory. This is done either by a symmetrically federal (Switzerland) or asymmetrically decentralized constitutional design of statehood (Canada, Spain). The second path consists of emphasizing and protecting unity and homogeneity, whereas at the same time trying to minimize differences. Again with different degrees of success, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Israel and Turkey are examples from our case studies.
As for the EU, it seems that the model that comes closer to the integration process is the one that accepts and tries to protect diversity, while building a common set of values, a common identity and common political institutions. The common identity can only be a civic or political meta-identity and it needs to be embedded in a political model in which the EU is designed and perceived as the guarantee and not source of threat to the existence and identity of constituent communities. The resulting federal system must attach great value to the self-government of its constituent parts all the way down to the level of the city. By giving such top down guarantees the EU can foster bottom up support.
Freedom of movement is fundamental as a formal right, but it cannot be the overarching paradigm of citizenship that trumps all other collective and individual rights. Any federalist structure implies manifold formal and material barriers to movement that can sometimes only be removed at the cost of threatening self-government of the constituent parts. Two aspects are to be highlighted from our case studies in this respect: First, the Swiss case has shown that Swiss movers (equivalent to intra-EU movers) experience difficulties related to different languages and education/job systems, etc. These issues have been dealt with at the federal level. Yet overall, the Swiss state continues to promote commuting instead of moving, so that each canton can maintain autonomy in policy-making. Second, as for the outsiders (the equivalent of the non-EU migrants), Canada has applied a strong policy of control over immigration (in numbers) in coordination with the provinces, while at the same time promoting policies of non-stigmatization of immigrants.
2. Language policy at the core of multiculturalism
The EU has adopted a multicultural discourse that attempts to protect the culture of all member states, but official EU languages are determined by the nation-states as members and therefore possible internal discriminations in the nation-states are projected on to the European level. There is no apparent cultural discrimination by the EU, but languages that are not recognized as official languages by the nation-states are not official European languages, such as for instance Catalan. More recognition of the regional and municipal realities by the EU is advisable also in this respect.
3. Lessons from federal an unitary models for the EU
To apply lessons from the federal and confederal case studies that have been successful in accommodating rivalling claims of citizenship:
1. Reduce the centralistic element of intergovernmental centralism by further measures of decentralization in which the member-states are formally equal (ad opposed to ad hoc opt-outs);
2. Reduce the intergovernmental element of intergovernmental centralism by introducing double-majority schemes of direct democracy and other institutional linkages between the national and European levels of democracy such as competencies of national parliaments in European affairs. As the Swiss and Canadian cases show, this can lead to centralistic redistributive measures, but these are channelled through democratic procedures that respect the vertical structure of multi-layered governance.
3. To learn lessons from the unitary case studies that have been successful in accommodating rivalling claims to citizenship continue to reduce complexity as in the successful unitary cases such as Czechia. Many more exits of EU-sceptic states as the UK would be necessary in this unitary perspective. Ultimately, it this not viable for the EU.
4. To continue with ad-hoc agreements with single member states and start with de-centralization from the EU level to the member states. Larger asymmetries between member states might result in further discrimination of some citizens against others.
5. To promote solidarity and identity in the EU: Canada and Switzerland have been extremely successful in promoting a common national identity that is complementary with the regional one via the promotion and securitization of local autonomy, whereas it is much less so in the EU (Spain as another case that seems to have been less successful in this regard – also related to linguistic policies).
Since the EU is framed as a multicultural system, our case studies confirm that it plays a relevant role in protecting specific communities within the EU. It is the case of Roma, for example in the Czech Republic (also Croatia; also Turkey even if outside of the EU).
The EU helps to make the problems of these communities visible and to keep member states responsible about their rights.

For the full report please click here

Written by:
Sybe de Vries, Elena Ioriatti, Paolo Guarda, Elisabetta Pulice, and Flavio Guella
March 2017

Drawing on the research conducted during the project, this policy brief advances several key ideas as regards the reinforcement of economic rights of European Union citizens. As the cornerstone of the European Union’s Single Market, the four freedoms constitute a principal driving force behind the European economic integration process. Through the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the economic principles and commitments for the Member States enshrined in the Treaty provisions on free movement have been transformed into substantive economic rights for European Union citizens. A particularly broad interpretation of the Treaty rules on free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital set in motion a process of constitutionalization of the economic freedoms. Now, with the legally binding European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights containing several economic rights – such as the freedom to choose an occupation and the right to engage in work (Article 15), the freedom to conduct a business (Article 16), the right to property (Article 17), the right to non-discrimination (Article 21), and the freedom of movement and residence (Article 45) – the fundamental character of the four freedoms has been reinforced. It can after all be argued that the four freedoms are more specific elaborations of these Charter rights. Accordingly, within the area of the Single Market citizens have gained, at least in theory, far-reaching rights to develop themselves and to challenge various kinds of measures and practices that hinder them in doing so. However, notwithstanding these legal developments, legal and factual barriers to the exercise of European Union economic rights continue to exist.
This policy brief aims to show which potential scenarios can be envisaged to relieve and perhaps ultimately eliminate persistent barriers to the exercise of economic rights. At the same time, proposals are made for how economic rights for EU citizens can be further enhanced.

Download the policy brief here: POLICY BRIEF – WP5 De Vries & Ioriatti

This deliverable aims to analyse how Canada deals with diversity, internal minorities and immigration at legal and political levels. This exercise is intended to be a source of inspiration for EU policies in the field of diversity. The text is divided in six sections on history of the case study, minorities and diversity at legal and political levels, challenges and general policy recommendations. We draw our conclusions based on a systematic analysis of the recent bibliography and data on this topic.

Features such as diversity in immigration policies, internal minorities and majorities, multiple historical interpretations and constitutional debates on how to accommodate this diversity are common both in Canada and the EU. Moreover, the Canadian case, as we show, is probably among the most relevant examples of federalism and multiculturalism among the world. The main questions guiding the chapter are related to diversity managing. What are the origins of diversity in Canada? Why is history relevant for understanding diversity? How the federal structure shapes immigration policies? Which are the main demands among ethnic and cultural minorities?

In the last section, we point out aspects that coincide or could inspire the European Union institutions. Canada and the EU somehow reflect the Tocqueville’s paradox, while become more mixed and cosmopolitan, national and territorial identities become stronger and more relevant in politics. Both the origins of the EU and Canada and also their institutional structure differ. However, several aspects can be a mirror for European institutions. For example, the capacity of the Canadian federal model to accommodate multiple citizenship regimes, the development of a decentralized immigration policy and, most importantly, its multicultural approach while maintaining its internal diversity concerning the francophone minorities, the First Nations and immigration. These policies and constitutional arrangements are not absent of political tensions but we claim that could be a source of inspiration for the EU, a Canadian mirror.

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1. EU integration is trying to achieve more political integration and accommodation of a much higher degree of diversity in much less time than has ever been the case in Switzerland. Integration and expansion processes that were slower and non-linear in Switzerland and that happened in separate phases (e.g. religious diversification, linguistic diversification, territorial expansion, etc.) are all going on at the same time in the EU. Especially integration and accession with enormous shocks of diversification are engineered at the same time in the EU. From this point of view, the EU has already tried to go beyond many stages that took centuries to be completed in Switzerland.
The speed and intergovernmental method of European integration and accession has been marked by relative success in times of peace, stability and economic growth. But what has been achieved seems less politically stable and consolidated in time of crisis. The contextual differences between the EU and Swiss integration process notwithstanding, we think it is fair to say that the consolidation of the EU integration process may also be achieved by de-acceleration and by abolishing the doctrine of strict process-linearity of ever more integration of all policy areas. The integration process should rather concentrate on policy areas that are directly relevant to overall territorial security and economic stability as the background conditions to European citizenship. Secondly, the comparison shows that the foundation of a few but robust federal state institutions in Switzerland in 1848 was a moderately coercive act that should not be romanticized by calling Switzerland a “nation of will”. The “will” to be a nation was construed post factum by a slow process in which the introduction of a coherent system of direct democracy at all levels of integration was key.
2. The institutional design of the European Union seems to echo quite well the federal state formation process in Switzerland. The following precisions are however necessary in the comparative perspective. First, the momentary stage of European Integration, characterized by intergovernmental crisis management, resembles the (dysfunctional) intergovernmental centralism of the Swiss cantons during the decades before the formation of the federal-state in 1848. Second, due to the greater diversity of the European Union, this quasi-federal system has derived in extreme asymmetries between the member states. Since EU identity is not well entrenched among European citizens (and politicians), it has been hard to design institutions and policies of common territorial protection and redistribution and there is mistrust towards centralistic EU institutions (specially in the countries more affected by the economic crisis). Most European citizens do not feel that their interests are taken into account by the European Union. Third, it is important to note that in Swiss federalism the municipalities play an important role, they are much more than just administrative districts. This city-centred and bottom up construct of citizenship is guaranteed by the Swiss federal constitution. Citizens feel that their most immediate and local identity is not jeopardized but rooted in and guaranteed by the Swiss federal constitution. Compared to sub-national Swiss federalism, EU federalism is entirely focused on the nation-state and the EU institutions. Serious consideration ought to be given to the idea that European citizenship is not only about bringing citizenship to a higher European level but also about bringing it more to the root-level of citizenship: the city.
3. Direct democracy has acted as a federator in the Swiss context. Switzerland made direct democracy and direct democracy made Switzerland. There has been a slow and iterative process of adaptation of structurally similar institutions of direct democracy at all levels (communal, cantonal, federal) of all units (all communes, all cantons, confederation roughly between 1830-1891. To the contrary, the EU is only incipiently in a process of introducing direct democracy (in some member-states and ECI), and so far direct democracy is mainly practiced as national plebiscitary democracy. Under this guise it is seen as a threat to EU integration and probably not without good reason.1 While in Switzerland the coherent introduction of direct democracy at all levels of the polity in the long run served as an important unifier, direct democracy has even not been considered as integrative part of all levels of political integration in the EU.
4. It is of great interest that the one element in which the European Union has based the construction of EU citizenship and identity – mobility of residence – has been implicitly discouraged in Switzerland. The institutional design as incorporated in Swiss multicultural identity (which aims fundamentally at the protection of cantonal autonomy, culture and language) has facilitated that Switzerland is called today a successful multicultural society. Most citizens identify with Switzerland as a country and they like it as it is, but they do not want to take advantage of their formal right to move to other parts of the country, especially not across language borders. The same institutional design that has made of Switzerland a successful case of multiculturalism and democracy poses important barriers that make it difficult for the Swiss to move their residence across their country. Considering that one of the main features of European citizenship is the freedom of movement and residence, this poses a main concern. The Swiss compromise between the formal right and economic necessity of mobility on the one hand and the protection of political and cultural sub-identities on the other hand, is commuting. Due to the vast size, this is of limited applicability in the EU. However, in a Europe of cities and trans-border regions, commuting is an important option provided that every European citizen lives reasonably close to an important economic centre. Here again there is reason for the EU to not only focus on the member-states economies but on the urban centres and regions.
The necessary infrastructure for swift commuting (and change of residency) is not only transportation. Supporting the Swiss system of commuting is fiscal federalism and shared fiscal revenue, a welfare arrangement for all Swiss citizens and a system of redistribution of funds among cantons. Moving one’s residence is formally possible, bureaucratically difficult, and culturally burdensome. There is reason to believe that this is even more the case in the EU with 24 languages. In short, the Europe of commuters deserves attention in the context of EU citizenship.

Download the full report here – Switzerland

Over the last decades, questions about managing linguistic pluralism and multilingualism have become a major political and scholarly concern. Linguistic diversity constitutes a salient dimension of the new social and political contexts of complex cultural diversity or ‘super-diversity’ (Vertovec 2007). Thus, a great political challenge emerges in the articulation of the functional character of different languages as a medium of social integration and of expression of collective identities.
In contexts of plurilingualism, the distribution of linguistic rights has to do with which linguistic communities, out of those co-existing in the private sphere, find recognition in the public domain. The extent to which different vehicular languages, taken as the languages used for communication among people that may have different or more than one mother tongues, may become part of a common or standardized communicative framework depends upon how linguistic policies are defined. Yet, language has both an instrumental and an expressive dimension. Whereas from an instrumental perspective, language is primarily understood as a medium that denominates things and facts, allowing thus people to communicate, the expressive aspects are crucial to how the members of a community conceive of themselves and frame their way of life (Taylor 1985). The instrumental and expressive dimensions cannot be separated easily; nor can one be reduced to the other. Linguistic policies need to be sensitive to both. However, managing the relationship between these two dimensions of language appears to be a terrain of dispute, in particular when subject to multiple political levels and actors:
Under democratic conditions, language policy is not only a tool for establishing an extensive frame of communication but it is also directed towards protecting the status or the “honour” of the members of the linguistic community and overcoming collective resentment in institutional contexts marked by cultural heterogeneity (Kraus 2008, 77).
Language is a key component of citizenship rights in a double sense. First, linguistic rights largely enable the exercise of other citizenship rights due to the ubiquity of language in all dimensions of collective life, and second, they strongly facilitate the configuration of a shared sense of community since social cohesion is not possible among a community that cannot speak fluently. Yet citizenship is a multi-layered phenomenon (Kymlicka 1995; Yuval-Davis 1999), which clearly exceeds the limits of the nation state, and has relevant developments at the sub-national level. Building on this assumption, the objective of this paper is to assess whether and how the current Spanish political regime has managed to accommodate the various linguistic communities, which in some cases overlap with the formal limits of the sub-national units, i.e. the autonomous communities (regional governments), whereas in others they do not coincide at all. More specifically, this paper aims to disentangle the political dilemmas and multifaceted claims regarding linguistic policies in Spain, being this a rather complex and subtle policy area in which multiple layers of national identity, social conflict and value formation converge. Additionally, linguistic policy often creates political tensions in the territory, not only across the national and regional levels, but also within the regional arena itself. Given these circumstances, the nature of linguistic conflicts and their political underpinnings have continuously generated controversy in both scholarly and policy debates in Spain.
There are four official languages in Spain, but only Castilian is official in the entire territory. Basque, Catalan and Galician are only co-official in certain regions, i.e. autonomous communities, and thus subject to a specific legal framework. Each of these languages, in turn, entails particular conflicts and debates in terms of which linguistic policy to follow, on the one hand, and of how to balance the use of these various languages, on the other. In addition, there are minorities in other regions, placed in well-defined territorial areas, which use any of these co-official languages, enjoying lower and dissimilar levels of protection. Finally, during the 2000s Spain received several millions of migrants coming from different countries of the world, enriching thus the linguistic diversity of the country, while also creating new challenges for already existing linguistic policies and legal frameworks. Furthermore, in recent decades the push for globalization added pressure to acquire a third language, making it still more difficult to keep the fragile equilibriums in place within and across regions.
A main outcome of this paper is that the linguistic policies established in Spain to manage the diversity of languages that exist at multiple levels since democratization are constantly exposed to political conflicts. This is because they occur at the crossroads where different types of communities interact (a la Kymlicka). First, these ‘linguistic communities’ are not always a majority in the regions where they are placed, and obviously they are a minority all-together in respect to Castilian. These linguistic communities call for recognition, linguistic rights and guarantees, including affirmative action. Second, in a number of cases they coincide with ‘sub-national communities’. These have their own identities – relying on regional institutions and policies in many areas – and which implement linguistic policies to support co-official languages to assure and expand their use vis-à-vis the use of Castilian, as far as the linguistic preferences of the majority of the population and their capabilities would allow in the short run. Third, Castilian has a powerful but undefined status in Spain: a linguae francae for some, a linguistic community of a majority of the population, and a ‘nation-state’ language in many respects. In all, there is not a consensus on the role of Castilian, which all linguistic communities in Spain accept. Finally, there are ‘migrant’ communities – internal movers, European Union (EU) movers and third-country nationals. These have expanded enormously all over the Spanish territory during the last decades, and have thus come to share spaces with most of the already existing ‘linguistic communities’, while also reshaping the sociolinguistic context to some extent. This third type of community requires a different set of policies, whose implementation lie in the hands of national and sub-national or local governments, and which should be attentive to multiculturalism and ethnic diversity, including but also going beyond linguistic issues.
A number of sub-national governments in Spain face the challenge of addressing various linguistic communities and their claims. Their policies and models attempt thus to accommodate pressures arising from different organized actors and social groups. Whereas the national government’s policies would favour the status quo where Castilian remains as the dominant language, or develop policies to expand Castilian across the map, we expect some constituencies to support political parties defending policies that attempt to strengthen co-official languages. To the extent that they are politically organized, immigrant communities might also ask for linguistic protection, multiculturalists’ rights and direct support to their cultural activities, depending on the social context and existing cleavages. Given this social and cultural complexity, defining a political strategy capable of keeping linguistic policies away from political conflict seems rather impossible.
To clarify the political dilemmas emerging from these issues, the empirical part of this paper focuses on the identification of claims made in the public sphere by representatives of any of the linguistic communities that coexist at the sub-national level in Spain regarding linguistic rights of citizens (increasing rights, protection of existing rights and claims against discrimination). Our analysis delves into four Spanish regions: Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Basque Country and Galicia, each of which displays very different characteristics regarding their sociolinguistic situation. In our analysis, we look more closely into the linguistic claims made in recent years (from 2005 onwards) by different actors involved in linguistic conflicts, with a particular focus on the areas of public education, media and the public space. We make use of media and document inquiry mechanisms. This information constitutes the empirical basis upon which we then provide a comparative assessment of the selected regions. We expect to find variation across the cases regarding the extent to which political and social conflicts increased, or on the contrary, they turned out to be cases of accommodation and claim reduction. Under which circumstances each of the cases falls is a matter of discussion in the comparative analysis, while the extent to which these responses can be transferred to the EU level are assessed in a specific section.

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The Czech Republic embodies a remarkable exception from the set of cases dealt with in this volume. From the macroscopic point of view, the Czech Republic resembles rather homogeneous country compared to Canada or Switzerland. Nationally and ethnically rather homogenous country with considerable low level of religious alignments, low profile of ethnic-based political parties and peacefully departed from Czechoslovak federation does not look intuitively to be an appropriate object of scholar research aimed at minority claims and their political treatment.
Historical path towards the present situation, however, shows much colourful picture of a country struggling with multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic, as well as multi-religious composition of the population. To simplify slightly, an observer can read the history of the second half of Czech 20th century as a history of de-complexification of Czech population. After extermination of Jewish population of Czechoslovakia, the German (and to considerable lower level Hungarian) inhabitants of Czechoslovakia were expelled, Ruthenia with Ukrainian-speaking (but with strong distinctive regional identity equipped) population was transferred to the Soviet Union and after partition of Czechoslovakia, the remaining Czech Republic left behind salient issue of Hungarian minority inhabiting Southern Slovakian regions. This short history is far from being a triumph of Czech politics of solving the ethnic and national disputes. It can rather serve as an example of how drastic measures were adopted in Europe only slightly more than half a century ago to achieve one of the ideals painted by enlightened concept of modern homogeneous nation that rules over a comprehensive territory of a nation-state.
Therefore, the important part of the study must be devoted to explanations of how the Czech lands once became multi-cultural, what problems it took along, what kind of conflict unfroze during periods of reluctant democratisation of the 19th and hasty de-democratisation of the 20th century and how the changing majority-minority configurations and clashed reached the climax in the turmoil if 1939-1945 period.
The partially coincidental, however fully accepted by political elite as well as public, strategy of violent homogenisation of the territory of the Czech Lands after the World War II did not remain without consequences for the recent politics of minority issues in the Czech Republic. By analysing the claims of politically relevant and in the same time contentious minority issues, such as situation of Czech Roma population and different strategies of its politicisation, the paper will not only show path dependency on experiences with violent unification and homogenisation of the Czech Lands but it will address important issue of how to cope with minorities, that are – for different reasons – unable to set the coherent political appeal of claims and to create sound minority. The experience with these “silent” but visible minorities with huge and risky potential of arousing political conflicts can bring some lessons for larger European Union of today.

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The objective of WP7 is to study, from the perspective of EU citizenship, specific problems EU citizens face in exercising civil rights and liberties in areas which fall within the scope of EU law, but also in areas beyond the scope of EU law. In the EU legal context, fundamental rights, including civil rights, have gained not only visibility but also, arguably, significance,
now that the Lisbon Treaty has made the Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding.

Media freedom and policy in the EU in general has been widely researched and studied, focusing largely on the areas less directly relevant for citizens, i.e. television and radio broadcasting, media regulators, etc. This case study therefore focuses on tackling barriers in an area more relevant for individual citizens’ freedom of expression, referred to as citizens’ journalism. This is a new field of practice and research, where conceptual clarifications are needed and which calls for further research into the application and evolution of legal and procedural frameworks, in line with changing journalism landscape (blogs, online comments, etc).

The Council of the European Union adopted Guidelines on freedom of expression online and offline for its external policy, while it does not have such guidelines internally, for its member states. Internally, freedom of expression is not strongly under the radar. There has been a discussion whether the mutual recognition of judgments in civil and commercial matters should not apply to defamation cases, since there is so much divergence. At the end, this has not become the case, therefore the strong substantive divergences remain, and need to be mutually recognized, with all resulting problems with forum shopping, and a potential race to the bottom.
This report’s initial understanding of citizen journalist has deliberately been an uncircumscribed one, in order not to impose an arbitrary, potentially too narrow concept on the different legal orders examined in this task. Therefore, the questionnaire was drafted to screen all possible forms of citizen journalism, such as blogs, social media, comments, wiki contributions, and had asked specific questions about their status, responsibility, sanctions on their own, and in comparison to a generally perceived category of journalism if there is one in the given legal system.
Citizen journalism is generally seen to provide an important avenue for political participation, the political engagement of citizens between elections, and the reinvigoration of a sense of authenticity or belonging. In an era of mistrust in both domestic and EU political institutions, republicanism is gaining appeal: scholarship has already recognized the need with regard to citizen journalism specifically, Ian Cram wrote a whole book on citizen journalism from the republican perspective. If there is any chance that the internet creates a truly republican “digital commons” so many hope for, it would certainly not be possible without citizen journalists. Equally, any prospect that EU citizens develop or further develop a transnational political discourse or an European public opinion or political public as Habermas would argue, presupposes citizen journalists writing on it. In this sense, citizen journalists writing on EU issues appear to be a necessary (though naturally insufficient) condition for more political, social, or in any sense thicker (post/or beyond-market) version of EU citizenship, both in practice and conceptually.
The so conceived ideal of citizen journalism would promote these more ambitious ideals of European citizenship and democracy. This is not to deny that activities looking like citizen journalism might of course harm others or might go beyond the scope of freedom of expression, and violate privacy rights or spread hate messages, and so on. There is some literature observing that citizen journalism might run the risks of bad journalism (hate speech, misinformation, etc.) to a larger extent than professional journalism. The initial understanding of this paper however was not to form any view on that. The risks generally do not seem to outweigh the massive legitimacy and other political-moral gains a more engaged transnational citizenry would bring to the European project. Furthermore, there was no indication that courts would be less willing to grant protection against violations of privacy, equality or dignity if caused by citizen journalists. This deliverable undertakes to check what the legal conditions are under which they operate, and whether there is convergence or divergence between different EU countries’ legal orders in this regard.

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Since the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), every person holding the nationality of a European Union (EU) Member State is automatically a citizen of the EU and is granted an additional set of rights. In 2007, the Lisbon Treaty strengthened EU citizenship by making the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding and by expanding the opportunities for democratic participation and increasing the visibility of EU citizen rights. Citizens are and must be at the heart of European integration. Therefore, it is important to make citizens’ lives easier, to help them understand their rights and involve them in a debate on the Europe they want to live in and build for future generations (European Commission, 2013, p.3). At the same time, the European Commission has noted in its 2010 EU citizenship report and in its 2013 EU citizenship report that citizens face difficulties in exercising their rights and are not always aware of the rights they legally possess (European Commission, 2010; European Commission, 2013).
To overcome possible barriers and stimulate opportunities for exercising EU citizenship an impact assessment for new policies and regulations might be useful. However, existing Commissions impact assessment guidelines do not focus on EU citizenship impacts. The focus is on economic, social and environmental impacts. Therefore, it is necessary to include EU citizenship. Bakker et al. (2016, p.12) note: “An impact assessment guideline where EU citizenship is included will make decision makers aware of risks for new barriers for citizens when exercising their citizenship rights and, in an ideal world, make them aware of what policies and regulations offer increased opportunities for exercising these rights. In the long term, this leads to a European administrative reality in which it is more easy and common for individual citizens to exercise their EU citizen rights”.
To develop an impact assessment framework that focuses on EU citizenship too, different steps are taken within the bEUcitizen project. First, in the working paper (D11.1) ‘Assessing policy implications for EU citizenship’ (Bakker et al., 2016) options for an impact assessment framework for EU citizenship are explored. Favorable impact assessment approaches are identified even as the elements that should be included in the framework and what requirements the framework should meet. Second, in (D11.2) ‘Towards Impact Assessment indicators for EU citizenship’ (Bakker and Van der Kolk, 2016) eight indicators to assess EU citizenship are developed based on outcomes of the bEUcitizen project so far and existing impact assessment guidelines and documents. The insights from these papers have been a starting point for this report.
In this report, we aim to include EU citizenship impacts in an impact assessment tool. When we include EU citizenship impacts, Bakker et al. (2016) argued it is necessary to include two specific elements into the impact assessment framework: (1) to assess EU citizenship impacts attention is needed for both EU citizenship rights and participation in the EU (political) community (the so called technical-rational and post-positive perspectives) , and (2) attention need to be paid to the EU and national level and the interface between the impact assessments on both levels. We explain these two elements further in chapter 2. In chapter 3 a practical ‘rules of thumb’ guide for carrying out an impact assessment is presented. In seven practical steps we explain how to carry out an impact assessment for EU citizenship. To make these steps transparent and workable we present tools for policymakers. These tools, presented as infographics, can be used by policymakers to see in a glance which steps to take in an impact assessment and where to think about when assessing for instance social and EU citizenship impacts. This will help to make the execution of impact assessments more workable and useable for policy makers on the European and the national level, especially with regard to EU citizenship. Furthermore, we do a proposal for revising existing impact assessment documents of the Commission. In chapter 4 we will explain this briefly. In annex I we present an extended version of the Guidance on social rights, now including EU citizenship, and annex II suggests a revision of the existing Impact Assessment Guideline. The report ends with a final note on how these proposals fit into the existing EU strategies.

Read the full report here -mpact assessment tools

In the legal EU context, fundamental rights, including civil rights, have recently not only gained visibility, but also acquired an increasing significance. This is particularly so since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon (2009), which turned the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights into a legally binding document. However, well before the Treaty of Lisbon, the civil rights of EU citizens, in particular those of free movement and non-discrimination, had already gained legal recognition in EU law through the case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The civil rights that have been studied in WP7 concern the set of rights necessary for the exercise of individual freedoms, whose exercise encounters significant legal, practical or policy difficulties. These include inter alia the right to free movement and the right to equal treatment (non-discrimination), the right to family life, the freedom of expression, the right to privacy, the freedom of religion, the right to property, the right to an effective judicial remedy and the protection against loss of citizenship. The right to gain access to travel documents, essential to the freedom of movement and of residence, was included as well. The foregoing were studied from the perspective of EU citizens, but also from that of third-country nationals, who enjoy certain rights on the basis of EU law (either derived rights as family member of EU citizens or under EU legislation concerning third-country nationals).
The scope of civil rights EU citizens enjoy on the basis of EU law is limited, as they can only be invoked against EU institutions and against Member States when implementing EU law (which should seemingly be understood as all situations that fall within the scope of EU law). A nagging uncertainty persists however as to when EU civil rights can be relied upon to challenge domestic restrictive measures or practices. Moreover, the scope of the residence rights that come with EU citizenship has traditionally been limited to transnational situations. The latter has produced unpalatable differences in the protection afforded by EU citizenship and the EU ‘Bill of Rights’ to mobile EU citizens who exercised their rights of free movement on the one hand, and to ‘sedentary’ EU citizens who have not on the other. Some case law of the ECJ suggests that there is a core body of citizenship rights which may be enjoyed without having to prove a transnational dimension, but the contours have remained unclear, and so far a further elaboration has not been forthcoming.

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Since the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) all nationals of EU member states hold EU citizenship too. EU citizens hold EU citizenship rights in addition to their national rights. These rights include civil, social, economic and political rights. Holding these rights does not guarantee actual participation: there are, for instance, increasingly concerns about (too) low voter turnout and a (too) low number of citizens participating in other activities related to political decision making. Therefore, there seems to be a quest for a European civic culture. Citizenship education, and more specifically European citizenship education, is seen as an important instrument to stimulate the development of a European civic culture.
This study shows that (governmental) policies and practices of citizenship education differ widely between the seven examined countries (the Netherlands, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Hungary). Citizenship education practices are, for instance, deeply related to the type of the democratic development, type of the democratic regime and social issues within the polity. Furthermore, the education practices show great variety of available teaching modules both in formal and informal way. There also seems to be a certain paradox between acknowledging the importance that civic education has for society, and political readiness to acknowledge that specific training is needed for teachers to be eligible to qualitatively educate and prepare students for their roles as active citizens.
However, all countries share a very similar approach regarding to the European dimension of citizenship: it is a highly neglected area within the national curriculum. The focus is dominantly on the factual and theoretical knowledge on the EU and especially its institutions rather than the promotion of values and the training of skills needed to exercise EU citizenship rights and needed for development of active, participating EU citizens. Hence, European citizenship education within the member states seems to be in its infancy. To develop a European civic culture, socialization and developing civic competencies are important. Therefore, it is important to strengthen and further develop European citizenship education. European citizenship teaching packages may help policymakers and teachers at the national level with these developments.
Moreover, considering the existing underdeveloped conceptualization and focus on EU dimension of citizenship in all studied cases, the introduction of (more) EU citizenship education has to be aware of at least two challenges. The first one stems from the generally dominant notion of elitist type of democracy of EU level, which is perceived to be dominated by the bureaucracy and disconnected to daily needs and practices of EU citizens. The role of EU citizenship education has to raise awareness on existence of interdependence of the decisions made on the EU level to the political consequences for national policies a practices of citizenship. The full emancipation of citizens can hardly be established even at the national level, if they are excluded from active participation at the decision making processes on the supranational level. The second challenge relates to the identity dimension of EU citizenship. There can hardly be EU without some sort of shared solidarity among its citizens. Citizenship education may not be a sufficient tool for achieving this goal, but it certainly is one of the most appropriate ones’ on the disposition of the member states.

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REVISITING THE FOUNDATION OF EUROPEAN UNION CITIZENSHIP: MAKING IT RELEVANT TO ALL EUROPEAN UNION CITIZENS
Policy scenarios and recommendations from bEUcitizen, a research project on the barriers to realise and exercise citizenship rights by European Union citizens

Written by
Marie-Pierre Granger

Drawing on the research conducted during the project, this policy brief assesses the current status of the civil right of free movement as the anchor of European Union citizenship. In democracies, freedom of movement is a core civil right and a privilege of citizens. The European Union is no exception: the nationals of the European Union member states, as European Union citizens, have the right to move and reside in any other member state, and when they do, they should be treated like the nationals of their host states.

This mobility and equal treatment paradigm of European Union citizenship, however, is under growing pressure. As the economic crisis hit hard, in particular in Eastern and Southern European states, their people moved to more wealthy European Union states, where they hoped to find work or ways of making a living. Meanwhile, citizens in Western and Northern Europe worried about what they perceived as increased competition for work and social benefits. Terrorist threats, the refugee crisis, and the rise of far-right, anti-foreigners and anti-European Union parties further challenge the unrestricted mobility basis of European Union citizenship.

If mobility no longer constitutes the ‘substance’ of European Union citizenship, then what could replace it? One possible solution is to shift the basis of European Union citizenship from mobility to rights, and rebuild it around the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights. Such a transformation would flesh up what has so far been criticized as a thin citizenship.

This policy brief evaluates the current status of the right to free movement as the anchor of European Union citizenship, and develops two main scenarios for the future of European Union citizenship, one based on the current paradigm of mobility and the other based on rights. It then offers a range of policy options, which seek to preserve mobility, as the more likely, although perhaps not the most desirable, basis for the future development of European Union citizenship.

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MOBILITY AND CITIZENSHIP IN EUROPE: FROM THE WORKER-CITIZEN TO INCLUSIVE EUROPEAN UNION CITIZENSHIP
Policy scenarios and recommendations from bEUcitizen, a research project on the barriers to realise and exercise citizenship rights by European Union citizens

Written by
Bridget Anderson, Isabel Shutes & Sarah Walker

Drawing on research conducted during the project, this policy brief examines the current status of mobility and access to rights of residence for European Union citizens and non-European Union citizens. The establishment of European Union citizenship in 1992 entailed the establishment of both the European Union citizen and the ‘Third Country National’ (the non- European Union citizen). As citizens of European Union member states became European Union insiders, so citizens of non-European Union states were turned into European Union outsiders. However, inclusion and exclusion are, in practice, seldom binaries but marked by shades of difference. Those holding the nationality of a member state may, in principle, all be citizens of the European Union. But they are differentially included in terms of their access to rights under European Union law, including rights to move and reside freely across the member states.1 Similarly, non-European Union citizens are residence in a member state, on which basis they can enjoy many of the rights of citizens of that state (though not rights as European Union citizens).

This policy brief focuses on the relationship between citizenship and work. Specifically, it highlights the ways in which mobility and access to rights of residence for European Union citizens and non-European Union citizens is controlled in relation to work and self-sufficiency. This has implications for inequalities between particular groups in terms of their relative inclusion within the labour market, and thus their access to citizenship and residence rights. But it also has much wider implications regarding the extent to which European Union citizenship serves to reinforce divisions and inequalities among Europe’s populations or to promote greater solidarity.

First, we consider the ways in which work is framed as a right and/or an obligation for European Union and non-European Union citizens in terms of their mobility and access to rights of residence in European Union member states. We highlight the ways in which the ‘worker-citizen’ model underpinning citizenship in Europe establishes inequalities among European Union citizens and among non-European Union citizens in terms of their relationship to the labour market, placing some groups at greater risk of exclusion from the rights and protections of European citizenship. Second, we consider two possible policy scenarios as regards the development of a more or less inclusionary European Union citizenship.

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PRECARIOUS VERSUS PROTECTED CARE WORK IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE
Policy scenarios and recommendations from bEUcitizen, a research project on the barriers to realise and exercise citizenship rights by European Union citizens

Written by
Trudie Knijn & Rosanne Oomkens

Drawing on research conducted during the project, this policy brief addresses care work for elderly people in European Union countries in the context ofthe right to free movement of labour. Despite a range of guidelines and directives in the past decades, the European Union still faces the intersectional problem of an ageing population, gender inequality, and lack of rights for
caregivers, the latter being mainly women and – in some countries – increasingly migrant women. The risks of older European citizens in need of care to be excluded from the right to care as well as the risk of female caregivers, in particular migrants, to work in unprotected and precarious jobs have increased in recent years, and the European Union seems so far not to be able to address these risks. The right to free movement of labour has been recognised by European member states as essential for integrating the European market and was established as one of the fundamental principles of the European Union. In fact, the preamble to the Amsterdam Treaty was “[c]onfirming [member states’] attachment tofundamental social rights as defined in the European Social Charter signed at Turin on 18 October 1961 and in the 1989 Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers.” In relation to this, “[o]ne of the most important conditions for achieving the free movement was considered to be the co-coordination of the national social security systems of the Member States.”

This policy brief is based on the assumption of the right to give and receive
care, which appeared to be an accepted solution by many member states during the 1990s for dealing with a) an ageing population and b) unpaid female care work, though in different shapes and degrees. This extension of citizenship rights, from the definition postulated by T.H. Marshall as the right to work, income, housing, education, and health5, to the right to care got shape
during that decade by the implementation of cash-for-care schemes in many European Union member states. These schemes exemplified the understanding of care-giving as a paid-for-time-spent activity contributing to the general wellbeing as well as to the right to receive care of citizens in need. However, various national interpretations of the right to give and receive care, made possible
by the rather weak European Union guidelines and the prioritisation of the principle of subsidiarity over the principle of gender equality, have resulted in harmful side effects for care receivers and care givers. An example is the Italian way of non-regulated cash-for-care schemes that set no standards on work conditions, payments etc., and which are mainly used to substitute female kin by unprotected migrant care workers. Another example is provided by the cutbacks in public care provisions in the Netherlands and Sweden in reaction to the economic and financial crisis, and to European Union budget rules.

In practice, effects are negative for all actors involved in care work because processes of austerity, privatisation, and localisation go hand-in-hand with severe budget cuts in the field of care. Reduced care budgets foster the employment of cheap unskilled care workers, some of them migrants, lead to reduced working weeks of female kin and/or the re-introduction of unpaid care
work. Two examples might illustrate this tendency. In the Netherlands, various new measures are currently being fleshed out in consultation with municipalities, health insurers, health providers, and other stakeholders. The government reduces large parts of Long-Term Care, such as personal assistance and care, from the Exceptional Medical Expenses Act, while adding a reduced budget to the municipalities (gemeente fonds). In addition, activities of a curative nature, such as long-term mental health care and home care by district nurses, are transferred from the public security fund Exceptional Medical Expenses Act to the collective Health Insurance Act. The number of people receiving intramural long-term care is further reduced by treating more new patients in the intensity home care packages. This leaves uncovered a clearly defined core Exceptional Medical Expenses Act scheme for the elderly and the handicapped, who requireintensive intramural care, amounting to roughly a third of the previous Exceptional Medical Expenses Act clients. Finally, the budget for municipalities to finance household help is reduced and payments by patients are increased. In Sweden and also in Denmark, care budgets have decreased and assessment follows stricter criteria, leaving an increasing number of elderly people to the care of their mainly female family members.

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TOWARDS A MORE LEGITIMATE FORM OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
Policy scenarios and recommendations from bEUcitizen, a research project on the barriers to realise and exercise citizenship rights by European Union citizens

Written by
Francis Cheneval

Drawing on research conducted during the bEUcitizen project1, this policy brief explores existing as well as possible future mechanisms of plebiscitary and Direct Democracy in the European Union. The underlying premise is that democratic decision-making devices should be legitimacyenhancing. Legitimacy is a degree of acceptance of the polity, the government, and of its decisions by the citizens. Factual acceptance is not sufficient. The latter needs to be determined under justifiable conditions, minimally described as: access to alternative information, transparency, formal participatory equality procedures that are as outcome-neutral as possible.

Direct voting by citizens is a reality in the European Union. Plebiscites on issues related to European integration have been held for several decades in European Union member states and in states related to European integration. The United Kingdom’s referendum on membership in the European Union is only the most recent example. With the European Citizens’ Initiative, which allows a citizens’ committee that manages to collect at least a million signatures in minimum seven countries to make a policy proposal to the European Commission, the European Union itself has introduced a direct democratic instrument in the Lisbon Treaty.

However, the adequacy of direct democratic instruments to decide issues related to European integration is under dispute. Some see Direct Democracy as a decision-making feature that favours populism and undermines European integration. Others contend that Direct Democracy is a means to better connect elite-driven European integration with the citizens in a time when this
nexus is becoming ever more fragile. Both can be right, but this depends on the institutional design within which Direct Democracy is enacted.

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LIMITED SOCIAL RIGHTS AND THE CASE FOR A EUROPEAN MINIMUM INCOME SCHEME
Policy scenarios and recommendations from bEUcitizen, a research project on the barriers to realise and exercise citizenship rights by European Union citizens

Written by
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser

This policy brief examines the current status of social rights in the European Union and makes the case for a European Minimum Income Scheme. Since the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty (1992), European Union citizenship has formally become a reality and citizens of European Union member states are no longer only citizens of the respective member states, but also ‘multinational citizens’ of the European Union.1 According to Dahrendorf, “[c]itizenship is … an idea that finds its expression in law … Citizenship creates a Rechtsgemeinschaft, a community under law…”. Substantive social rights have in turn been characterised as crucial for the ability of all citizens, irrespective of class, to participate more fully in the Rechtsgemeinschaft and to enjoy their political and civil rights. In this view, social rights are a precondition to full citizenship, or the “the final stone in the arch which holds up the roof of citizenship”.

Social rights are typically realised and conceptualised within the context of nation states. Therefore, it is also not surprising that the concept of social rights does not have a uniform meaning across European Union member states. Moreover, definitions of social rights and social citizenship vary with the institutional design of social policy systems at the nation-state level, which may be built on the principle of universalism, on promoting social stability, or mitigating poverty and lead to very different outcomes. Within the European Union, we are witnesses of very large differences in the level of inequality and poverty among member states, which is not related to the level of economic development, but largely a consequence of political choice.

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EUROPEAN POLITICAL CITIZENSHIP 2030: POSTDEMOCRACY WITH POPULIST ACTIVISM OR AN INTEGRATED POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP?
Policy scenarios and recommendations from bEUcitizen, a research project on the barriers to realise and exercise citizenship rights by European Union citizens

Written by
Oliver Eberl & Sandra Seubert

Drawing on research conducted during the project, this policy brief discusses the problems preventing European Union citizens from becoming active political citizens. European citizenship as active political citizenship has been underdeveloped from the start and is currently under strong pressure. Over time, European Union citizens seem to have lost enthusiasm for the European political process: Voter turnout in European Parliament elections decreased from 61,99% in 1979 to 42,61% in 2014. Attempts to transform elections for the European Parliament into a meaningful decision about the policies and the personnel of European institutions have been ineffective so far in two ways: On the one hand, they did not raise more
interest in European affairs; on the other hand, and even more problematically, the ‘Spitzenkandidaten’-experiment was overshadowed by the power struggle between national leaders and the European Parliament.
Although similar tendencies towards decreasing voter turnout can be observed in national elections, the trend of fading popular support is particularly alarming at the European Union level. It threatens to undermine the legitimacy and functionality of the European Union, thus jeopardizing the entire integration process. Institutions without support cannot last. The European Union provokes a rather negative political reaction among its citizens and populist activism is challenging its policies and the integration process more broadly. The Brexit decision expresses this problem in an ideal-typical form: Europe-friendly citizens do not use their right to vote while anti-European activism brings citizens to the ballot box. Concerned with this passivity as well as with the activism mobilised by anti-European populism, Europe-friendly observers and actors see a major opportunity for the European Union to strengthen the European Parliament as the core institution of a European representative democracy.

Click HERE to download the full policy brief.

The objective of WP7 is to study, from the perspective of EU citizenship, specific problems EU citizens face in exercising civil rights and liberties in areas which fall within the scope of EU law, but also in areas beyond the scope of EU law. In the EU legal context, fundamental rights, including civil rights, have gained not only visibility but also, arguably, significance, now that the Lisbon Treaty has made the Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding.

Media freedom and policy in the EU in general has been widely researched and studied, focusing largely on the areas less directly relevant for citizens, i.e. television and radio broadcasting, media regulators, etc. This case study therefore focuses on tackling barriers in an area more relevant for individual citizens’ freedom of expression, referred to as citizens’ journalism. This is a new field of practice and research, where conceptual clarifications are needed and which calls for further research into the application and evolution of legal and procedural frameworks, in line with changing journalism landscape (blogs, online comments, etc).

The Council of the European Union adopted Guidelines on freedom of expression online and offline for its external policy, while it does not have such guidelines internally, for its member states. Internally, freedom of expression is not strongly under the radar. There has been a discussion whether the mutual recognition of judgments in civil and commercial matters should not apply to defamation cases, since there is so much divergence. At the end, this has not become the case, therefore the strong substantive divergences remain, and need to be mutually recognized, with all resulting problems with forum shopping, and a potential race to the bottom.

This report’s initial understanding of citizen journalist has deliberately been an uncircumscribed one, in order not to impose an arbitrary, potentially too narrow concept on the different legal orders examined in this task. Therefore, the questionnaire was drafted to screen all possible forms of citizen journalism, such as blogs, social media, comments, wiki contributions, and had asked specific questions about their status, responsibility, sanctions on their own, and in comparison to a generally perceived category of journalism if there is one in the given legal system.
Citizen journalism is generally seen to provide an important avenue for political participation, the political engagement of citizens between elections, and the reinvigoration of a sense of authenticity or belonging. In an era of mistrust in both domestic and EU
political institutions, republicanism is gaining appeal: scholarship has already recognized the need with regard to citizen journalism specifically, Ian Cram wrote a whole book on citizen journalism from the republican perspective. If there is any chance that the internet creates a truly republican “digital commons” so many hope for, it would certainly not be possible without citizen journalists. Equally, any prospect that EU citizens develop or further develop a transnational political discourse or an European public opinion or political public as Habermas would argue, presupposes citizen journalists writing on it. In this sense, citizen journalists writing on EU issues appear to be a necessary (though naturally insufficient) condition for more political, social, or in any sense thicker (post/or beyond-market) version of EU citizenship, both in practice and conceptually.

The so conceived ideal of citizen journalism would promote these more ambitious ideals of European citizenship and democracy. This is not to deny that activities looking like citizen journalism might of course harm others or might go beyond the scope of freedom of expression, and violate privacy rights or spread hate messages, and so on. There is some literature observing that citizen journalism might run the risks of bad journalism (hate speech, misinformation, etc.) to a larger extent than professional journalism. The initial understanding of this paper however was not to form any view on that. The risks generally do not seem to outweigh the massive legitimacy and other political-moral gains a more engaged transnational citizenry would bring to the European project. Furthermore, there was no indication that courts would be less willing to grant protection against violations of privacy, equality or dignity if caused by citizen journalists. This deliverable undertakes to check what the legal conditions are under which they operate, and whether there is convergence or divergence between different EU countries’ legal orders in this regard.

Download the full report here - Freedom of expression

In its previous research, Work Package 10 of bEUcitizen examined the rise of the worker-citizen and found that work can shape differential inclusion into the community. However, people may also be differentially included and excluded from the world of work. Deliverable D10.3 explores these processes with regard to specific groups of people or individuals that engage in specific types of labour. Five case studies of different social groups (both citizens and migrants) serve to examine the relationship between work, citizenship and inclusion/exclusion. The case studies are a mixture of a single state focus, or a comparative focus of particular groups in select countries involved in WP10: Croatia, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands and the UK.1

Deliverable D10.1 analysed the ways in which the ‘worker citizen’ underpins national and EU citizenship with respect to policies regarding entry to and residence in a nation state, naturalisation, and access to social security provisions, policies which cut across citizens and migrants. We examined how citizenship is increasingly cast as being deserved by hard-working, self-reliant individuals prepared to take responsibility for themselves and demonstrated that citizenship requires having the status of a worker (Anderson, Shutes, Walker 2015). For the purposes of this report, we refer to ‘worker’ as both a legal and social status. Under EU Law, to attain worker status, work has to be deemed to be “genuine and effective” and not on such a small scale as to be “marginal and ancillary” (See Anderson, Shutes, Walker, 2015: 52 for further discussion). Thus understanding the relation between inclusion and exclusion and the spaces in between (which we described as ‘differential inclusion) requires us to analyse how people are differentially included in labour markets and in the world of work.

Analyses of the relationship between citizenship and the labour market have tended to examine the exclusions of migrants and the exclusions of those who have the legal status of citizenship separately. For example, the literature on the impact of immigration policies on the labour market participation of migrants has tended to sit apart from the literature on the impact of welfare-to-work policies on the labour market participation of citizens. In keeping with the theme of this work package, we are interested in examining citizens and migrants together, taking as our starting point inclusion/exclusion from the labour market, rather than the migrant/citizen binary. This deliverable (D10.3) examines how the labour of different groups is differentially included – how different groups are differentially included as ‘workers’ – and discusses the implications for understanding the relationship between citizenship and work, and the barriers to citizenship, for both citizens and migrants.

We have five case studies which focus on different social groups and the ways in which they are differentially included in the labour market (in different national contexts). They comprise: (1) people with disabilities as participants in the adjusted wage programme in Israel; (2) EU migrant women in the UK; (3) refugees in Croatia and Ireland; (4) domestic workers in the Netherlands. The fifth case study, beggars/begging in the UK and Croatia, was chosen to explore exclusion from the world of work and the delineation of the boundaries of labour itself, as well as its relation to honour and to community.

Download the full report here: Citizenship and Work

The overall aim of WP9.7 is to analyse ‘cross-national case studies on gender equality as the focus of national and nativist discourses’. This deliverable is based on the national reports on the rhetoric of populist radical right parties from the seven selected countries, i.e. Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary, Germany, Italy and Spain, together with Israel. The objective of this synthesis report is to identify similarities and divergences in framing migration, mobility, gender and family and the implications of these frames for European citizenship. Our sample of parties were selected from continental, Nordic, Central and Eastern European and Southern European member states of the EU, all experiencing different path dependencies and breaks in their socio-economic, political and cultural institutions, something which may be formative for populist radical right agendas. .

The analysis has identified different logics in the framing of gender equality in relation to migration, mobility, diversity and family issues: An economic dimension that links migration and diversity to the logic of the labour market and the welfare regime, and a cultural dimension that links gender, family and religion to national values and belongings. The economic rationale, in the sense that concerns for migration and mobility override issues related to gender equality and the family, seems to be the most prevalent one for the Northern European countries, while the cultural rationale is much more visible in the case of the other countries, South, East Central and Continental European alike.

Overall, the analysis illustrates both similarities and differences in the selected parties’ framings of migration and mobility. Many similarities exist between the Northern, Southern and Eastern European radical right parties in regards to the negative positions on migration and ethnic, religious and national minorities. Despite the similarities, the analysis also points at important variations across the geographical divide between Eastern and Western radical right parties in relation to internal mobility, primarily attached to the economic dimension. In the West, the parties perceive their citizens as “invaded” by EU-migrants, and in the East as being forced to migrate; both positions blaming the EU policies for the welfare problems, their countries experience. However, practically all parties frame migration around its financial strains on the welfare systems, the economy, and in the West also in terms of labour market integration.

Gender, family and religious issues, including women’s and gay rights, used to be a crucial part of the cultural dimension, but family issues such as the support for ‘working mothers’, have moved to the welfare dimension, as part of a Conservative agenda to secure labour power and boost the national economy. The report concludes that in spite of differences in national welfare and family models, there is a similar trend towards an instrumental use of gender and family issues as a means to secure the welfare state, or as a way to solve the problems with family crisis, demographic sustainability, and protecting the national values.

The overall conclusion of the synthesis report is that EU-citizenship is more contested than ever, and it demonstrates that the strengthening of the nativist and nationalist right-wing parties across Europe and in the EP is challenging the EUs founding principles of free mobility of labour/open borders, the principles of gender equality, as well as the guiding principles of non-discrimination of nationalities, ethnicity, sexuality and religion. Despite their differences in relation to family and gender issues, the selected radical right parties agree upon one common goal: to restrict crucial elements of EU citizenship related to internal mobility and diversity. Some parties even propose an ethnic citizenship limited to nationals born within the country, and others call for rights of ethnic Diasporas both in EU member states and beyond. Thus, all the analysed parties across the geographical divide support increased border control, although with different arguments. They thus propose different versions of Euroscepticism, which are all opposed to fundamental principles of internal mobility, and the principle of non-discrimination on the basis of nationality.

Finally, the report confirms the importance of contextual embeddedness for the divergences between the analyzed populist radical right parties. Divergence or convergence depend on meeting points between emerging European political opportunities and national contextual factors brought to the European arena by the diverse parties. In addition it is worth noticing that major events such as the refugee crises can prompt the reorganization of agendas, marginalization of controversial points, and alignment of these parties along the same platform.

Download the full report here

Context of the present report

The objective of Work Package 7 (WP7) is to study, from the perspective of European Union citizenship, specific problems individuals face in exercising their civil rights and liberties in areas which fall within, but also in areas that lie beyond the scope of EU law.

After the prior identification and critical assessment of the nature and scope of the civil rights that citizens are entitled to (task and deliverable 7.1), the modes of transposition and the mechanisms available at EU level and national levels for granting and enforcing civil rights were explored, with a view to identifying institutional, legal, procedural and practical barriers that EU citizens and third-country nationals face in gaining access to justice (task and deliverable 7.2). The ultimate objective of WP7 is to analyse possible limitations and restrictions of different natures that undermine the effective exercise of these rights, on the basis of four in-depth case studies. The case studies to be undertaken within the Work Package relate to i) an exploration of the obstacles that citizens face in trying to enjoy their core citizenship rights (task 7.3), (ii) an exploration of the difficulties faced by EU citizens when trying to enjoy the freedom of expression in the context of media law and policies (task 7.4), (iii) a study of obstacles that (mobile) EU citizens and their families face in dealing with life events (task 7.5), and iv) a study on obstacles that (mobile) EU citizens and their families face in gaining access to travel documents (task 7.6).

It was decided in July 2015 at the bEUcitizen WP meetings in Zagreb that the partner institutions participating in task 7.6 would be UA, UU, CEU, UCPH and UNITN (replacing the earlier designated UNIOVI). Consequently, country reports were to be produced on, respectively, Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary, Denmark and Italy. In keeping with the approach adopted in the WP thus far, the task leader (UA) drafted the following questionnaire for the purpose of drawing up country reports, a first draft of which was disseminated in June 2015 and the final version in August 2015. The current general report draws together the threads from the individual country reports that were compiled at the end of 2015. While its main aim, in line with the WP objective, is to identify possible barriers, the conclusions also contain some (policy) recommendations and suggestions for lowering or eliminating these.

Download the full report - Access to travel documents

• Hypothesis: if the legislations of the Member States concerning life events increasingly differ, the EU citizenship and the civil rights are clearly prejudiced.

• Purposes: study of the lack of harmonisation of EU Law, the disparities of the national legislations and the effects and impact of them on EU citizenship and the free movement of persons.

• Methodology: case study. Each case is initiated with a short background explaining the subject and scope of the topic and the aims of the research. On the other hand, each case includes model cases in order to illustrate the standard practices, which are used as an example in order to explain the solutions of each Law and to include leading cases of each country. Starting from these assumptions, the staff of the different countries submitted a national report, whose paragraphs have been almost literally incorporated in order to enhance the transparency of the research project.

• Topics: regarding the lack of harmonisation of EU Law, the disparities of the national legislations and the effects and impact of them on EU citizenship and the free movement of persons, it is convenient to select the following life events: filiation, forenames and surnames and marriage, accompanied by a final and transversal topic relating to the circulation and recognition of documents on civil status.

• Scope: the selection of countries in order to inform on these topics is based on the following grounds: countries of Central Europe, such as Belgium and The Netherlands, with a very consolidated experience in EU citizenship as founders of the EEC; countries of the South of Europe, such as Spain, which has a Latin tradition in Family Law; countries of the East of Europe, namely Hungary, as more recent members of the EU; and countries of the North of Europe, such as Denmark, whose position is very interesting as this country is not a member of the EU space of freedom security and justice.

• Conclusions: adoption of Private International Law acts by the EU; mitigation of barriers to the free movement by the general principle of the effectiveness of life events (mutual recognition of life events and the principle of unique identity); progressive replacement of the national public policy by a public policy at an EU level; uniform and coordinated identification and persecution of fraud and abuses of the free movement of persons; and harmonisation of civil registries of Member States and the improvement of the cooperation between the Registries.

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Utrecht University researchers dr. Hanneke van Eijken LL.M and Pauline Phoa, LL.M have prepared a general report which provides a comparative and critical overview of the exercise of so-called core EU citizenship rights in selected Member States (Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, the Netherlands and Spain).1 Core EU citizenship rights include access to and loss of nationality (and thereby also the acquisition and loss of the EU citizenship status), the right to reside in a host Member State and in the Member State of nationality, the right to family reunification in a Member State for EU citizens, the right to free movement of EU citizens and the derogations to those rights: expulsion measures and abuse situations.

Rules on nationality fall, in principle within the exclusive scope of competence of Member States. However, on the one hand the access to MS nationality opens up EU citizenship to TCN, or has consequences for migrated EU citizens and their children. On the other hand, the CJEU decision in the case of Rottmann (C-135/08) has made clear that the loss of Member State nationality may bring nationality laws within the scope of EU law, as it may also affect a person’s status as EU citizen. “Under international law, it is for each Member State, having due regard to Community law, to lay down the conditions for the acquisition and loss of nationality” (par. 10). Nowadays it is clear that Member States have to take into account the outer limits of EU law in their competence to regulate nationality laws. The description of the nationality laws in the reported Member States do not always reflect an awareness on the side of the national authorities of the consequences EU citizenship rights for their nationality law.

The EU citizenship right to freedom of movement and the right to reside in another Member State have been established in primary and secondary EU law for a while now, and the implementation of these rights into formal national law seem to be relatively unproblematic in most Member States. However, the answers to the questionnaire show that there is a significant gap between formal law and the actual operationalization of these rights in day-to-day (administrative and judicial) practice. Certain key concepts of EU citizenship rights, such as “sufficient resources”, are subject to differing interpretations in the different Member States, which is undesirable from the perspective of coherence and uniformity of EU law.

Connected to the general EU citizenship right to free movement and residence, are the rights to family reunification, either with family members holding the nationality of another Member States, or with third country national family members. Such family members may have – under certain conditions – a right of free movement and/or residence that is derived from their EU citizen family member’s core EU citizenship rights. In this area of law, the national reports again show that there are disparities between Member States in the judicial interpretation and/or administrative application of concepts such as “dependent family member”, and “genuine relationship”, which may form obstacles to a full use of the opportunities that EU law offers.

The EU Treaties and EU secondary legislation allow for certain derogations or limitations to the core EU citizenship rights of free movement and residence. Member States may take expulsion measures and measures preventing or punishing abuse of EU rights, under certain conditions. The national reports show that there are interpretive difficulties on these topics, and that there is a growing tendency to connect having insufficient resources with unlawful residence.

Download the full report here

Creativity and innovation within the European Union are part of a harmonized system of protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs); the latter include legal tools such as industrial property rights and copyright and related rights. The fundamental principles of the internal market (free movement of goods and services and free competition) are based in particular on the harmonization of IPRs at the European level. The protection of intellectual property is subject to a number of international conventions, the supervision of which is largely up to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). To fulfil its obligations in the area, the European Union has created the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), in charge of the registration of European trademarks and European designs. The Commission is currently engaged in the effective implementation of a common EU patent system, less costly and more effective from a legal point of view, able to ensure the competitiveness of European business and enterprises. Finally, the protection of IPRs also implies that they must be safeguarded against piracy, illegal trade and counterfeiting.

The Internet and digital technologies play a pivotal role in this context, since they are transforming the world we live in, with reference to all the aspects of life and all sectors of activity. EU must embrace this digital revolution and open new digital opportunities for citizens and business, by leveraging the strength of the EU single market. The existence of barriers to online activities prevents citizens from taking advantage of a wider range of goods and services. Therefore companies and public administrations cannot reap the benefits of digital tools. The final scope of the Digital Single Market (DSM) aims at breaking down regulatory barriers in order to establish a single market, in place of the partially harmonized 28 national markets now existing.

This research report is aimed at identifying and analysing the possible barriers that the European citizens/digital service users face in enjoying their rights when they aim to access to online cultural contents. In light of this, DSM strategy of the European Commission has been taken as a point of reference for pintpointing the legal and factual barriers, describing what are the reform projects in progress and outlining some possible, future (policy) solutions.

Download the full paper here

If we assume that market integration serves the interest of citizens in their capacity as consumers and optimizes consumer welfare, then the EU rules on free movement and competition could, according to Weatherill, be seen as a form of consumer policy.[1] Since national consumer protection law may impede free movement, which in itself is thus designed to advance the consumer interest, the European Court of Justice (hereafter: ECJ or Court), has developed its own notion of consumer interest.[2] This notion relates to the consumer’s capacity to process information and make informed choices about available products and services, which is crucial for the market integration process. According to the case law of Court the consumer is considered an individual who can, if provided with the necessary information, make his own choices and defend his own interests. In GB-INNO-BM the Court held that “Article 28 (now Article 34 TFEU) cannot be interpreted as meaning that national legislation which denies the consumer access to certain kinds of information may be justified by mandatory requirements concerning consumer protection”.[3] This is also referred to as the notion of ‘reasonably circumspect consumer’ considering the Court’s perception “that most consumers are sufficiently robust and well-informed to take care of themselves in the market place”.[4]

Deliverable 5.4 looks into the rights of consumers in the Digital Single Market and into consumers’ experiences in a number of Member States in the (cross-border) online purchase of goods and services. This Deliverable thus contributes to gaining more knowledge about the capacity of consumers to process information and make informed choices in the field of the digital single market. As this case study builds upon previous research carried out in the context of Work Package 5 and particularly on Deliverable 5.2, it does not, contrary to what is stated in the Description of Work (DoW) deal with the energy market. Deliverable 5.2 focussed on the following three implementation-items:

Access of economic actors to the market
The protection of economic rights of consumers
The protection of citizens’ rights in the digital era

Deliverable 5.4 deepens the analysis carried out in Deliverable 5.2 with respect to the second two implementation items., These dealt with general implementation issues relating to the Consumer rights Directive 2011/83/EU and the protection of personal data of consumers.

As was stated in Deliverable 5.2 in respect of the Digital Single Market Commissioner Ansip explicitly mentions, among others: breaking down national silos in (…) copyright and data protection legislation (…); helping build the framework conditions for protecting citizens online, including fighting against cybercrime, and simplifying consumer rules for online shopping[5]. Deliverable 5.2 focused on the protection of online citizens. Rapid technological developments in the field of the Internet have considerably increased the possibilities for citizens to do business, also cross-border, to provide and receive information via the Internet and to process and store data. The positive effects of these developments can hardly be denied. But at the same time there are growing concerns about the protection of citizens’ personal data and privacy in the digital society, not only as a result of the state seeking to collect personal data in its fight against crime and terrorism, but also of the increasing ability and desire of companies using these data for business purposes.

Trust is essential for the development of the Digital Single Market and the abolishment of barriers for citizens to sell and purchase goods and services cross-border. A number of measures have been adopted at EU level to enhance the internal market and to protect citizens’ privacy and data.[6] Within the European Union, data protection flows essentially from Directive 95/46/EC and Directive 2002/58/EC[7]. In addition, a number of Articles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union are directly or indirectly relevant for data protection.

This Deliverable specifically focuses on the remaining challenges for consumers to effectively use these rights, to effectively process information and to make informed choices in the digital internal market. The main question is how the barriers to exercising consumer rights can be overcome so as to further enhance and develop the Digital Single Market. This research paper combines the insights provided by the country reports covering Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Hungary and the Netherlands, with regard to (digital) consumer rights. The number of countries has been established on the basis of the existing expertise within WP5 and the division of work amongst the different case studies carried out in WP5.

The research methodology used in this case study is partly the so-called ‘black letter law’ approach, which refers to a comprehensive legal analysis of legislation and case law that has been carried out, partly desk research, collecting, analysing and interpreting all other relevant information available in print or published on the Internet.

For present purposes, the term digital consumer rights covers both rights specifically dealt with in e-commerce Directive 2000/31/EC and the digital dimension of consumer rights within the meaning of Consumer rights Directive 2011/83/EU.

The digital age and the Internet offer specific challenges for consumers as well as possibilities for the EU Single Market by promoting cross-border sales and use of services. According to the Commission in its Single Market Act “the development of the digital single market is hindered by lack of consumer confidence, the prime causes of which are payment security and enforcement of consumer rights in cross-border transactions, particularly with regard to product safety and counterfeiting”.[8] As will be seen in this report, Member States support information requirements for traders and more guidance for consumers in seeking to overcome persistent barriers for consumers to purchase goods and services online, in creating more consumer confidence and in stimulating the (cross-border) sale of goods and services. The Netherlands Consumer and Market Authority (ACM), for instance, specifically endorses the idea of ‘consumer empowerment’, which is strongly linked to the above-mentioned basic notion of the consumer in EU law.[9]

The question is whether this approach meets the current challenges that European consumer policy face, where consumer behaviour and their impact on the market have considerably changed. Due to economic and technological developments and due to developments in for instance behaviour economics, the informed and rational consumer hypothesis has been challenged: consumers are in their opinion all vulnerable as they struggle to make rational decisions; they are irrational and sometimes uneducated.[10] This may also be true for the field of e-commerce and the digital Single Market, where mistrust, safety concerns, questions relating to data protection and an image of insecurity are important and persistent concerns for consumers. If consumer empowerment, through the imposition of far-reaching information requirements, may appear to be insufficient, particularly to protect the more vulnerable consumers, barriers will continue to exist. And this will hamper the further development of the Digital Single Market and the cross-border online sale and purchase of goods and services.

In the questionnaire, which constitutes the basis for this Deliverable, participants in Work Package 5 have been asked to focus on three themes:

Theme I: Implementation of the e-commerce Directive 2000/31/EC and the digital dimension of consumer rights within the meaning of Consumer rights Directive 2011/83/EU;

Theme II: National experiences in online purchase of goods and services, focusing on general trends in the purchase of goods and services;

Theme III: National experiences in the cross-border online purchase of goods and services, focusing on the cross-border online purchase of goods and services.

[1] S Weatherill, ‘27 – Consumer Policy’ in P Craig and G De Búrca (eds), The Evolution of EU Law – Second Edition (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2011) 838.

[2] Weatherill, ‘EC’ (1997) 41; see for the notion of consumer in Community law: K Mortelmans and S Watson, ‘The notion of the consumer in community law: a lottery?’ (1995) Tijdschrift voor Consumentenrecht 229-246; S Weatherill, ‘Recent case law concerning the free movement of goods: mapping the frontiers of market deregulation’ (1999) 36 CML Rev 51-85.

[3] Case C-362/88 GB-INNO-BM v Confédération du commerce luxembourgeois (GB-INNO-BM) [1990] ECR I-667, para 18. In his opinion AG Lenz emphasized the importance of information – in the form of advertisements – for consumers: ‘Information should only be withheld from the consumer for his own protection for convincing reasons. After all, it must be assumed that any accurate information can only be useful to the consumer’ (para 34).

[4] S Weatherill and P Beaumont, ‘EU Law’ (London, Longman, 1999) 699-702.

[5] http://ec.europa.eu/commission/2014-2019/ansip_en

[6] <http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/law/index_en.htm> accessed 25 June 2015.

[7] Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 24 October 19956 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data [1995] OJ L 23/11 resp. Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and on the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector [2002] OJ L 201/37.

[8] Commission Communication (n 111) 12. This part does not explicitly return in the Single Market Act II, Commission, ‘Single Market Act II: Together for new growth’ (Communication) COM (2012) 573 final.

[9] See also S. de Vries, ‘Consumer Protection and the EU Single Market Rules: the Search for the Paradigm Consumer’, Zeitschrift für Europäisches Unternehmens- und Verbraucherrecht Journal of European Consumer and Market Law (2012) 4:228 – 242

[10] I Benöhr, EU Consumer Law and Human Rights (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013) 84.

Download the full paper- Capacity of the consumer to process information and make informed choices

This deliverable (9.8) is an article submitted to the International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family (Oxford Journals) which analyses the notion of family in the EU and family reproductive rights in a group of EU member states with different legal, cultural and social backgrounds (Italy, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Croatia and Hungary). The article combines a sociological and legal approach and is based on a questionnaire completed by the partners involved in the task (see Annex I).

The social and legal changes in the geographies of families in Member States encourage the European Union to reconsider its traditionally prudent approach to family law. Indeed, the free movement of people, an essential characteristic of European citizenship, requires legally established family statuses to be ‘portable’ abroad. Similarly, marriage and reproductive mobility arising from the variety of national regulations force domestic legislatures and courts to challenge the definitions of family found in domestic law and social policy in the name of the right to family life and the principle of non-discrimination. Thus, this article starts by discussing the various notions of family that emerge from national laws and social policies in six EU member states with different legal, cultural and social backgrounds (Italy, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Croatia and Hungary). It then delineates the role of Europe and the social and legal interactions between Member States in the construction of a definition of family. Finally, it concentrates on cross-border reproductive care, a case study that allows for shedding light on the convergences among countries, as well as the role of Europe as a supra-national institution and as a space in which family models circulate and spread. The main conclusion is that a multilevel analysis of the notion of family shows the circularity of interactions top-down and bottom-up between Europe and individual States, as well between society and law.

Read the article here: or here: , https://academic.oup.com/lawfam/article/31/1/94/3065581?

This report (Deliverable 7.2) analyses the way specific civil rights are protected in selected Member States (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United-Kingdom), with a focus on implementation and enforcement aspects. It is based on answers, for the selected Member States, to a two-part questionnaire, which enquired about the protection of civil rights first within the scope of application of EU law, and, second, in matters which do not necessarily have an EU law connection, but nonetheless affect the way EU citizens, whether mobile or not, can exercise their civil rights.

The findings suggest that civil rights standards in the EU are generally satisfactory, and remedies well-developed in most Member States. However, some barriers arise from the narrow scope of protection afforded to certain rights in some of the Member States, with the result that EU citizens, depending on where they live, are not equally protected; this is problematic for the notion of EU citizenship, since the right to equal treatment before the law is a core citizen’s right.Furthermore, judicial decisions which rule legislative provisions incompatible with civil rights standards are not always followed up by necessary legislative amendments, or at least changes in administrative practices, which de facto deprives citizens from the enjoyment of their rights. Further barriers results from difficulties in accessing appropriate remedies in case of (imminent) violations, in particular in political and institutional environments in which checks and balances do not operate properly, and political expediency takes the upper hand. Limits in the availability of emergency or interim proceedings, legal aid, or NGO support create serious hindrance in litigating for civil rights. There is evidence of adjustments mechanisms between remedies at different levels, which citizens seeking protection and civil rights organisations can resort to; however, these do not play out across the board, with the consequences that deficiencies remain.

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Deliverable 2.1 provides elaboration of the original research design and informs about ideas for the final Volume II of bEUcitizen. It is closely connected to task 1 of work package 2: specifying various concrete tasks for the different work packages and formulating overarching questions suitable to provide substantive cohesion and integration of the overall project. The elaboration of 10 cross-cutting topics (to become chapters in the “horizontal” book, D2.3.) is a first step towards this goal. Discussing these cross-cutting topics is supposed to feed, infuse and inspire the work done in the different work packages and to build cross-cutting connections between them. Themes 1-10 merge into a valuable overview of the multi-faceted research on (EU) citizenship. They access the main issues of EU-citizenship and citizenship in general from different angles and different disciplines. Taken together these contributions help to identify barriers towards EU citizenship and ways to overcome them. Each Theme formulates questions how it might feed and be fed by further information and findings in the other work packages.

The full deliverable can be found here

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NEW PUBLICATION ON CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL RIGHTS

SPECIAL ISSUE OF EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SECURITY VOLUME 18 – No. 2 – JUNE 2016

Special Issue edited by Thomas Erhag

This Special Issue focuses on how residence-based social security schemes have reacted to legal developments concerning EU citizenship and the free movement of persons. It is well known that the development of case law concerning the right to free movement and equal treatment for EU citizens, together with an expanding scope of the Regulation 883/04 have triggered discussions of ‘social tourism’ in several Member States.

In May 2015, a workshop was organised at the University of Gothenburg, where invited scholars, some of them working in Work Package 6, presented papers on the reaction of national law to legal developments at the EU level. The participants represented countries using residence-based schemes: the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, Denmark and Sweden. The overarching objective of the workshop was to describe and analyse the reactions of residence-based schemes to the free movement of persons within the EU. This Special Issue includes edited versions of the papers prepared for the workshop together with an introduction and an analysis of the papers as a conclusion.

Deliverable 9.4 aims to investigate the relationship between the effects of existing discrepancies between civil, political, social, and economic citizenship rights on the one hand, and obligations of European and non-European citizens as family members moving across borders on the other. The goal of Deliverable 9.4 is to provide insights on national attitudes towards several key themes, including: family and reproductive rights across diverse family forms in Europe, attitudes towards gender roles, attitudes towards European efforts to converge social and civil rights for family members and attitudes on the portability of these rights while moving within Europe. These insights are provided through a discussion of our analysis of existing data and literature and results from our six-country pilot study.
Task 9.4 was carried out in four stages, including: a) an investigation into existing cross-national, European datasets to determine to what extent data and survey scales exist that attempt to measure these national attitudes within EU countries; b) a literature review, which synthesized research using existing items and item scales across these four themes; c) a six-country pilot study conducted in Croatia, Denmark, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain to test newly developed items on these attitudes; d) statistical analyses on the data from the pilot study to describe respondents’ attitudes towards these issues as well as to determine whether cross-country differences are evident.
The main finding of the review is that the data available on these national attitudes varies considerably, as does the use of attitudinal data in social science literature. No existing data could be found that directly assesses national attitudes on a number of topics key to WP9. Hence, a questionnaire was developed to explore these attitudes. The pilot study, conducted between December 2014 and March 2015, obtained a selected sample of youth, all within tertiary education in the Humanities and Social Sciences, mostly without children, and mostly from higher-level socio-economic family backgrounds. Within this selected sample, cross-country differences in attitudes in the four themes explored were evident, reflecting the social embededdness of attitudes, particularly in relation to social and civil rights. However, cross-country differences were not evident across each of the themes. For example, while countries appear to be polarized between more traditional countries (i.e. Italy and Croatia) and less traditional countries (Spain and the Netherlands) in terms of the convergence of rights between heterosexual and homosexual couples, in all countries, there seems to be greater acceptance towards equality in social rights rather than civil rights. These findings help to fill important gaps in our current understanding of attitudes towards social and civil rights in contemporary Europe.

Download the report here - Report of a cross-national pilot study

This report derives from the work of partners involved in Work Package 9 of the FP7 programme bEUcitizen: Utrecht University (NL); the University of Zagreb (HR); Aalborg University (DK); Central European University Budapest (HU); the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (IS); The University of Turin (IT) and the University of Oviedo (ES). This report studies the way the complex dynamics of individual member states’ care, migration and employment policies impact on the citizenship status of migrant care workers. It also explores the extent to which migrant care workers from EU versus non-EU countries (i.e. third country nationals, TCNs) can exercise citizenship rights across the EU15 (Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain), new members (Croatia and Hungary) and non-EU states (Israel).

Relation between the ‘right to receive care’ and migrant care work

The categorisation of ‘migrant care worker models’ that we introduce – the ‘state-supported professional MCW model’ (DK, NL), the ‘state-supported domestic MCW model’, (ES, IT), and the ‘legalised-informality MCW model’ (HR, HU) – demonstrates under which conditions distinct patterns of migrant care work prevail. In countries where citizens have the right to receive professional LTC services, a well-developed formal LTC system exists in which care is provided by trained professional workers. In migration policies access is restricted for unqualified workers from third-countries and highly-skilled workers have privileged access (DK, NL). Migrant care work prevails in those countries where the family logic of care prevails and where citizens have the right to receive non-professional LTC (ES, IT). LTC systems in which care is provided in the informal sphere by non-professional workers may be characterised by a large underground economy, which may represent a favourable condition for the informal employment of MCWs as live-in workers. When the state supports care provision within the private household through the entitlement to cash-benefits schemes, hiring non-professional migrant care givers is facilitated (ES, IT). The absence of a well-developed professional LTC system seems to imply that less restrictions are imposed on the educational requirements for TCN migrant care workers, which also facilitates entry for low-skilled migrant care workers. In countries where the family logic is dominant, but where the state does not recognise citizens’ right to receive (non-professional) LTC by offering cash benefits, care receivers seem to be less likely to hire a migrant care worker (HR, HU).

Access to citizenship rights depends on labour market position and residence status

The type of work and/or residence permit a migrant care worker holds is key to understanding their access to social security benefits. Migrant care workers – except those entering the host country on a ‘highly-skilled worker’ status – are in a vulnerable position due to the (often) temporary character and/or irregular nature of their employment status, which makes it hard to gain financial independence, and subsequently a permanent residence status. Migrant care workers’ attainment of citizenship rights is therefore circumscribed by their position in the labour market. For migrant care workers, the way to receive social citizenship rights is narrowed down to being financially independent, making regular paid employment in the key to social citizenship.

Download the report here- nReport on the legal-sociological analysis of discrepancies and dilemmas in care workers’ rights

The central aim of this Deliverable 9.5 (Report on the perceptions of political parties in the European Parliament and social movements) is to analyse the positions and opinions of political groups in the European Parliament (EP) and European social movements on civil, political and social rights for women, migrants and minorities in order to understand their views on family-related rights and values, in particular the position of the Committee of the European Parliament on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM). The deliverable focuses on the policy issues of free movement of young women, migration and elderly care, and how they are affected by EU level policies, positions and opinions. In this way, we are able to address gender, age, and generation issues, which are key foci of WP9, and, at the same time, link to the distinction between citizens/non-citizens of WP10. Aalborg University has coordinated and executed this task.

The working process included several steps:

Desktop research to select relevant themes for the analysis.
Reading and coding all of the relevant policy documents (reports and opinions; see appendix) drafted by the FEMM Committee regarding free movement of young women, migration and elderly care from 2009 to 2014, using a critical frame analysis approach.
Mapping positions and opinions of political groups on the selected issues and identifying key frames.
Desk top research on positions and opinions of political groups and civil society organisations (CSOs) on the selected issues as these are communicated on their respective web sites.
Policy tracing key reports within each area in order to analyse the policy process (debate and amendments in Committee, plenary debate and voting results as well as explanations to votes).
Conducting, transcribing and analysing interviews with politicians (FEMM Committee MEPs) and civil society representatives (major European organizations in the field).
Producing data on the descriptive representation of women in the EP and the FEMM Committee.
Presenting an overview of existing literature related to the work, function and dynamics of the FEMM Committee.

Download the report here - Report on the perceptions of political parties in the European Parliament and social movements

The identification of economic rights relates to the economic context in general (also referred to as ‘economic phenomenon’) on the one hand and to citizens’ liberties on the other. Deliverable 5.1 is aimed at uncovering a definition of the concept ‘economic rights’, thereby identifying their specific nature. In each country economic rights deal with the regulation of the factors of production (labour and capital) and with limitations to private economic activities (business regulation), connected with their exploitation. More generally economic rights are concerned with property ownership and economic initiative. From these two main categories each legal system developed a broader list of rights connected to the economic phenomenon, focusing on market regulation, the protection of competition, and the interests linked to business (economic free initiative). Common trends in the historical evolution of the regulation of property and economic initiative have been observed across the Member States. From the industrial revolution to the more recent developments in the economies of the Member States, the need to protect citizens’ social and economic interests can be characterized by different legal solutions, which are first described from a broader perspective (sections 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1) before turning to the different national experiences (2.3, 3.2, 4.2, 5.2).

These trends have determined to what extent in the respective Member States the freedom of initiative, social protection within the economic production process and the post-industrial economy are, irrespective of the differences between the various legal systems, regulated in a similar fashion, i.e. by means of codification, through the incorporation in the constitution or by means of legislation; however, legal tradition and political background have informed the unique and country-specific enforcement of these rights within the Member States.

Download the paper here - Research paper on the categorization of economic rights

The analysis carried out for Deliverable 7.1 focuses on the recognition and scope of civil rights of EU citizens and third-country nationals by national, European and international law. The national reports (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom and Ireland) reveal that the main sources of civil rights in the different countries are the national constitutions and specific national legislation, the European Convention of Human Rights and the EU Charter. In substantial terms, the civil rights are quite similar and entail, for instance, the freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial, freedom of association and assembly. The scope and recognition of civil rights in the countries assessed is nonetheless dependent on the national legal system and its openness to international and European civil rights. The application of the EU Charter is increasing in national case law. The ECHR seems, however, to be the main source of reference for international civil rights by national courts. Awareness of the civil rights in the EU Charter could thus be improved. A particular difficulty with the Charter is that it is only applicable within the scope of EU law, with the consequence national courts may be inclined to rely on the ECHR when in doubt as to whether the EU Charter is applicable to a specific national case.
In terms of barriers to citizenship, it seems that, as a preliminary conclusion, the recognition of civil rights is much dependent on national legal systems and that judicial practice show a preference to refer to the ECHR over the EU Charter. There are, however, signs that this is slowly changing. In most countries, the national legislation lacks references to the EU Charter or the ECHR. Nevertheless, most of the international and European civil rights are recognized in national law, because these norms are directly applicable or because these norms are transposed into national law.

Download the full paper - Research paper on the legal framework for civil rights protection in national and international context

The central aim of this deliverable is to identify possible trends EU member states’ social policies in relation to a number of important citizenship issues. The broader objective of WP9 is to study the relationship between the effects of discrepancies between respective civil, political, social, and economic citizenship rights and obligations of European and non-European citizens as family members moving across borders. Within this project, we have identified four themes to focus on: care for the elderly, non-national care workers, the reproductive rights of family members and mobile youth. For this deliverable, we have evaluated (i) the 2013 National Reform Programmes of those 23 member states that had National Reform Programmes available and in the English language (exceptions include France, Portugal and Romania) and (ii) the 2014 National Reform Programmes for Croatia and Ireland who did not have a 2013 document. The analytic perspective used in this evaluation has been the policy-scientific approach of Leeuw (2003).

The current deliverable contains a first short description of EU guidelines and a descriptive summary of member state discourses on these four themes. Utrecht University has coordinated the task and one partner has contributed by delivering an analysis of the 2014 Croatian National Reform Programme. The working process included several steps:

Desk top research to select relevant themes for the analysis.
Reading and coding all of the Europe 2020 documents and 2013 National Reform Programmes for any information on care for the elderly, non-national care workers, reproductive rights of men and women (including migrants) and mobile youth.
Coding each of these themes into relevant sub-themes related to citizenship rights.
A draft version of this report was discussed at the bEUcitizen conference in Istanbul, Turkey in late June/early July 2014. WP9 members provided comments on this report at that stage.

Additional data was collected for Croatia, which joined the EU in 2013 and produced its first National Reform Programme in 2014. Additional data was collected for Ireland, who had not produced a 2013 National Reform Programme. The 2014 National Reform Programmes of both Croatia and Ireland are included here.

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This report derives from the work of partners involved in Work Package 10 of the FP7 programme bEUcitizen: Utrecht University (The Netherlands); the University of Zagreb (Croatia); University College Dublin (Ireland); the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel); the University of Oviedo (Spain) and the London School of Economics and the University of Oxford (UK). The report explores the complex dynamics of insiders and outsiders, and their mutual dependence. For inclusion and exclusion are in practice seldom binaries, but marked by shades of difference, by differential inclusion and exclusion. WP10 focuses on the three key axes of mobility, naturalisation, and welfare benefits, all of which intersect to explore the ways in which ‘citizenship’ is both a legal and a normative status, that is, how formal in/exclusion is related to ideas of deservingness and ‘Good Citizenship’. This report explores the interactions of these axes and the differential in/exclusions that result via the six states under study, which enable us to examine EU15 (Ireland, Netherlands, UK, and Spain as a Southern EU state), new member (Croatia) and non-EU (Israel) states.

Access to state territory (mobility).

In EU member states hierarchies of entry are dependent upon citizenship status, wealth or skills except for those considered part of the diaspora understood as shared ethnicity/common descent (Croatia, Spain, Ireland), or religion (Israel: Law of Return). There is an evident move towards a knowledge-based economy and attracting the ‘brightest and the best’ across the EU, with resultant restricted access for family migration and lower skilled workers. Thus, access revolves around the management of the mobility of ‘the poor’, except where co-ethnicity/ religion provides access to ‘poor’ but in some cases this is curtailed by EU membership.

Access to citizenship (naturalisation)

Increasingly, in what has been termed the commodification of citizenship, citizenship is premised upon wealth and income, under the guise of ‘integration’. However, there is a difference between those for whom naturalisation is a prize and those for whom it is an entitlement. For those whose access to naturalisation is not shaped by ethnicity/diaspora, naturalisation is a ‘privilege’. In contrast, those whose access is shaped by ethnicity/diaspora often have facilitated naturalisation processes. Thus preferential access to citizenship is evident for some groups. Formal citizenship is an acknowledgment of a prior community.

Access to Social Security

European citizenship not only reinforces but extends the worker-citizen model: Work (effective and genuine) is increasingly a central requirement to access welfare for both citizens and EEA, save for those whose access is shaped by ethnicity/diaspora.

Conclusions

Differential inclusion and exclusion: EU nationals residing in an EU state of which they are not a citizen are not totally included – but, neither, necessarily, are nationals (e.g. Roma). Neither are TCNs totally excluded: e.g. TCNs with legal permanent residence have many of the rights of citizens (though not rights as EU nationals). A clear disjuncture between state and nation: for nations large populations are good and lend credibility; for states large populations are expensive. Concerns about the instrumental use of EU citizenship (access to work and benefits) have consequences for member states’ national social security and naturalisation policies.

Download the full report: - nReport on the rights and obligations of citizens and non-citizens in selected countries

Citizenship is a socio-political instrument of inclusion – and therefore inevitably also of exclusion. It has been so ever since the invention of the concept in Antiquity. In the historical literature it is often argued that the exclusion element was for a long time predominant, and only became replaced by ‘inclusion’ after the French Revolution and the rise of parliamentary democracy. In the pre-modern world exclusion mechanisms were indeed an important aspect of the rules for the acquisition of citizenship status, and in particular for guild membership and the monopoly rights that their regulations asserted. Guilds, especially, have been portrayed as providing unfair advantages to established masters and their descendants, over immigrants and other outsiders. This potentially had serious economic consequences. Privileged access to certain professions and industries is seen as a disincentive for technological progress. On the basis of this critique, we might assume that the sons of locally established citizens and masters dominated the citizenry of towns and the membership of the average craft guild. In this paper the results of detailed local investigations of the composition of citizenries and guild apprentices and masters are brought together, to find out to what extent this picture is historically correct. We argue that this data offers an indirect measurement of the accessibility of citizenship and guilds that allows insight into the mechanisms of exclusion and their impact. The paper finds that sons of established masters did dominate in some places and trades, but in many others they did not, and that, by implication, our understanding of urban and guild ‘monopolies’, and the measure of protection and reward they supplied to established citizens, is in need of serious revision. This in turn implies that the historical narrative of European citizenship creating an ever greater inclusiveness, is perhaps also in need of revision.

Workpackage 3 explores the historical dimensions of citizenship in Europe from the seventeenth century onwards. It aims to provide a long-term perspective on the issues facing modern policy makers in relation to citizenship in the multi-national environment of the EU. An important element of this is comparing various citizenship regimes and connecting their characteristics to economic performance and overall wellbeing. This working paper is intended to provide the basis for one element of this comparison.

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Publications

Here you will find all publications.

EU Citizenship Teaching Packages for secondary school pupils (Deliverable 11.6)

Scenarios for EU citizenship in 2030 – Repertoires for action in thinkable futures (Deliverable 11.5)

Work-related Conditionality and the Access to Social Benefits of National Citizens, EU and Non-EU Citizens

Gender and generational dimensions in accessing to Social Rights by EU mobile citizens

The European Ombudsman: democratic empowerment or democratic deficit?

Final Report on dissemination activities

Non-competition interests are no competition for ‘Market Europe’: does EU competition law hamper the exercise of political rights?

Research paper on Cross-task analysis: “The practical linguistic barriers faced by economically active EU citizens”

Report on ‘Israel: Religion and Ethnicity as Basis for Different Minority Rights’

Report on Croatia: A Serbian Minority Inside and a Croatian Diaspora Outside?

Comparison of different experiences and rivalling identities and claims to citizenship elsewhere

Contracting for Apprenticeship in Early Modern Europe

EUROPEAN POLICY BRIEF: REINFORCING ECONOMIC RIGHTS OF EU CITIZENS

Constraints imposed by financial markets on political choice in the EU

The EU and the Canadian mirror: citizenship, evolution and minorities

Switzerland: A Future Model for the European Union? Similarities and Differences

Turkey: Minorities, Othering and Discrimination, Citizenship Claims

Linguistic policies and citizens’ claims in a multi-national state: The case of Spain

The Czech Republic: Minority Rights since the Days of the Habsburg Empire

CASE STUDY (II) ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MEDIA

GENDERED AND GENERATIONAL ASPECTS OF SOCIAL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND CIVIL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS – The findings of WPs ON GENDERED AND GENERATIONAL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS

NEW BOUNDARIS, NEW POSSIBILITIES – Minorities and Citizenship in Estonia

Towards Impact Assessment indicators for EU citizenship

Impact assessment tools for policy makers on the European and the national level

CROSS-TASK ANALYSIS

The quest for a European civic culture – The EU and EU Citizenship in policies and practices of citizenship education in seven EU member states

EUROPEAN POLICY BRIEF: REVISITING THE FOUNDATION OF EUROPEAN UNION CITIZENSHIP: MAKING IT RELEVANT TO ALL EUROPEAN UNION CITIZENS

EUROPEAN POLICY BRIEF: MOBILITY AND CITIZENSHIP IN EUROPE: FROM THE WORKER-CITIZEN TO INCLUSIVE EUROPEAN UNION CITIZENSHIP

EUROPEAN POLICY BRIEF: PRECARIOUS VERSUS PROTECTED CARE WORK IN THE EUROPEAN UNION: FINDING THE RIGHT BALANCE

EUROPEAN POLICY BRIEF: TOWARDS A MORE LEGITIMATE FORM OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

EUROPEAN POLICY BRIEF: LIMITED SOCIAL RIGHTS AND THE CASE FOR A EUROPEAN MINIMUM INCOME SCHEME

EUROPEAN POLICY BRIEF: EUROPEAN POLITICAL CITIZENSHIP 2030: POSTDEMOCRACY WITH POPULIST ACTIVISM OR AN INTEGRATED POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP?

CASE STUDY (II) ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE MEDIA

The barriers that professionals face in gaining access to the services market

Citizenship and Work: Case Studies of Differential Inclusion-Exclusion

Report of Case Studies on Gender Equality as a Focus Point of National and Nativist Discourses

Options for new Forms of Participation in the EU

Democratic parliamentary control in times of crisis

Access to Travel Documents

LIFE EVENTS OF EU CITIZENS

Exploring obstacles in exercising core EU citizenship rights

A Legal Analysis of the Possibilities and Impediments for Citizens Seeking to Enforce their Social Rights

Research paper on Case Study (iii): “Barriers that citizens face regarding their intellectual property rights”

The capacity of the consumer to process information and make informed choices in the digital internal market

Working paper on rates of failure to qualify for citizenship and trades

Working Paper on assessing policy implications for EU citizenship

Article on geographies of families in the European Union: a legal and social policy analysis

Report on experiences with existing ECI

Report on options for direct democracy in the EU

Report on voter turnout for the European Parliament and Political Equality in the EU

Report on national parliaments as collective actor of European citizenship

Report on public regulation through private litigation: consequences for political choice

Report on the transposition of the relevant EU instruments in the Member States

Research paper on guild traditions, economic development and the formation of national political economies

Mechanisms transposing and enforcing civil rights aiming at identifying barriers that EU citizens and third-country nationals

Report on analysis of European datasets on employment, inactivity and unemployment

Research paper on the transposition of the relevant EU instruments in several Member States

Introduction of Cross Cutting Themes: Further Conceptual Elaboration of the Original Research Design

Social and geographical backgrounds of citizens and aspirant citizens in selected towns

The Social Construction of Human Rights across Europe

Being a Citizen in Europe: Insights and Lessons from the Open Conference, Zagreb

Report on 2nd consortium meeting and mid-term conference

Attitudes of national populations towards social and civil rights for family members and the role of the EU in converging these rights

Legal-sociological analysis of discrepancies and dilemmas in care workers’ rights

Perceptions of political parties in the European Parliament and social movements

Social rights of EU migrant citizens: A comparative perspective

Research paper on formal and informal barriers to citizenship and trades

read The categorization of economic rights

The legal framework for civil rights protection in national and international context

Dissemination plan for bEUcitizen and a report of year 1

Conceptual and methodological framework for systematic comparison and analysis

Report of first annual consortium meeting

The transposition of EU guidelines and directives

The scale and scope of citizenship in Early Modern Europe

Rights and obligations of citizens and non-citizens in selected countries

Access to the trade: Citizens, craft guilds and social and geographical mobility in early modern Europe (Working Paper 1)

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