Final Report Summary - BEUCITIZEN (All Rights Reserved? Barriers towards EUropean CITIZENship.)
Executive Summary:
The objectives of the FP7 funded project entitled bEUcitizen – All rights reserved? Barriers towards European citizenship – were to provide a comparative overview and classification of the various barriers to the exercise of the rights and obligations of EU citizens in the Member States and some candidate countries, to analyse whether and how such barriers can be overcome and to explore the future opportunities and challenges the EU and its Member States face to further develop the idea and reality of EU citizenship.
In our project citizenship is not perceived as a merely legal or constitutional category. Instead, citizenship is studied in its interdependence between rules and practices, or between law and society. Legal rights are the outcome of societal and political processes, and, in turn, subsequently structure and influence them. Furthermore, citizenship is a heterogeneous concept, characterized by multi-layeredness and multi-dimensionality, which affects various categories of citizens differently.
With a view to address the dynamics between legal rules and societal practices, the differentiation of citizenship rights across domains and categories of citizens, and the existence and effects of multiple barriers to the exercise of citizenship rights, we have brought together a multidisciplinary team from 26 universities and institutes situated in 19 countries across the EU and outside to combine their expertise. As citizenship has both normative and empirical dimensions this team includes both representatives from normative disciplines, such as law and philosophy, and empirical sciences, such as sociology, political science, history, economics and policy studies. Furthermore, the team is supported by an advisory board of high-level experts, who are internationally recognised and eminent for their academic achievements and/or societal status. They have played an increasingly active role in critically following, discussing and advising on the findings of the project and in assisting the executive board of the bEUcitizen consortium.
After an initial phase, which focused on coordination of the research and the setting up of methodologies, substantial progress was made on the research tasks and the deliverables during the second phase. In the last stage of the project we concentrated on the integration of the research findings from the different Work Packages, on creating more synergy between deliverables and on elaborating a coherent ‘narrative’ of European citizenship. We also focused on disseminating our main results among decision makers, academic community and general public. Key-findings have been translated into a series of seven policy briefs, where we also develop a set of alternative scenarios for the future of EU citizenship, with the aim to provide input for policy formulation, development and implementation. Within Work Package 11 we developed a citizenship impact assessment tool, which will serve as a practical tool for policy makers to assess consequences of policies for EU citizenship and broaden their perspective on what to include and who to consult. With the aim to establish a better understanding and awareness among young people of citizenship rights and obligations and of ways in which European citizenship can be exercised, we developed a series of five teaching packages for secondary school pupils in the age of 14-16/17.
Finally, the results deriving from the work undertaken in the different Work packages have been collected in the bEUcitizen book series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on EU Citizenship, which will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in Spring 2018.
Project Context and Objectives:
2.1 Project context
People living in Europe belong to different concentric or overlapping communities: neighbourhoods, cities, nation states and the European Union. They can also belong to various other groups or categories: (extended) families, genders, age groups, ethnic groups, the employed or the unemployed, students or pensioners, the healthy, the sick or the disabled as well as language or religious communities. These communities and categories define – multiple – identities, which engender rights, duties and responsibilities. Over time some of these have come to be defined in law.
Membership of territorially defined communities is called citizenship. This term – as well as related ones in other European languages (citoyenneté, burgerschap, Bürgerschaft, ciudadanía, cittadinanza, cidadania, cetatenie, medborgarskap) – stems from the term ‘city’, ‘burg’, fortress i.e. a walled and protected territory. Inhabitants of this walled territory had freedom, which furthered independence and individualism. However, not everybody within the city wall was a “citizen”. Citizenship has and had next to the territorial definition always also a social construction of membership which included and excluded some groups. The beggar within the city wall was not part of the citizens, to give an example of exclusion. For those who were included, the right to freedom and independence was always combined with duties and responsibilities. Walls provided protection, but had to be built, maintained, and defended. Duties such as serving in civic militias, guarding walls and dykes, providing labour, and paying taxes were required in order to guarantee the continued protection of these rights. Such rights and duties stabilised mutual expectations between people and developed into customs. Eventually they became enacted in law, in order to increase transparency and predictability and ensure equality.
The bEUcitizen project, which responded to the FP7 SSH Call 2012 Activity 5 Challenge: Exercise EU citizenship: removing barriers, sought to study European citizenship from a set of distinctive perspectives. Citizenship in this research project is understood not only as a merely legal or constitutional category, but was studied in its interdependence between rules and practices or between law and society. Legal rights are the outcome of societal and political processes, and, in turn, subsequently structure and influence them.
To address the dynamics between legal rules and societal practices, the differentiation of citizenship rights across domains and categories of citizens, and the existence and effects of multiple barriers to the exercise of citizenship rights, the bEUcitizen project has brought together a multi-disciplinary team from all over Europe to combine their expertise. As citizenship has both normative and empirical dimensions - another expression of its multi-dimensional character - this team included both representatives from normative disciplines such as law and philosophy, and from empirical sciences, such as sociology, political science, history, economics and policy studies.
Another characteristic of the bEUcitizen research project was its unique approach. Rather than studying citizenship as a homogeneous concept, our project acknowledged its heterogeneous character, in several respects.
Firstly, citizenship is conceived as a multi-Layered concept.
In Europe, concepts of local, national and EU citizenship exist side by side. It is a multi-layered phenomenon. This is neither new nor unique. Before the codification of the concept of citizenship after the French revolution, the co-existence of local, regional and national concepts of citizenship was the norm rather than the exception. Federal states display such features to some extent even today. For example, in Switzerland people are still in the first place a citizen of their canton and
only secondly of the federation. They derive different rights from these identities or lack of them. Thus lawyers who have done their lawyer’s exam in one canton until recently could not practice in other cantons. Studying such historical and contemporary models of federal states helped us to identify workable solutions to some of the challenges currently faced by the EU in its attempts to further develop a European form of citizenship.
Secondly, we also acknowledged that citizenship is heterogeneous in terms of the domains it applies to.
Characteristically, citizenship impacts a whole range of fields, starting with politics and the law, but
extending to economic, social and ultimately also cultural rights. As our project showed, citizenship can develop at a different pace in the various domains and this can create rivalries, tensions and complementarities Citizenship rights and duties pertain to the various roles people have and concern different domains of society. Several dimensions of citizenship can therefore be distinguished.
A classic and familiar distinction is that between negative and positive rights. This is linked to the distinction between ‘freedom from’ and the ‘freedom to’ (Fromm 1942, Berlin, 1959). Negative rights are for example ‘freedom from’ something, usually constraints on freedom e.g. from terror, want, insecurity, the burden of corruption. Positive rights refer to the ‘freedom to’: marry, speak freely, vote, undertake, engage in contracts, invest, sell one’s labour, etc. Often, of course, positive freedoms can be redefined into negative ones. This is also the case with the European Union’s four freedoms. The freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and labour can be rephrased as a freedom from constraints on these movements. This is why this often isn’t such a useful classification.
Another classic distinction is that defined by T.H. Marshall (1950) between civil, political and social rights. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights uses this typology, but has added the category of economic rights (which for Marshall were included in the social rights). That is understandable, considering that the European Union started out as an Economic Community, and used to be the main pillar of the three pillars when they were still distinguished. The four EU freedoms refer to economic mobility within and across the borders of Member States: to the traded input and output of economic enterprise: goods, services and to the factors of production: capital and labour.
The EU has put the emphasis on economic rights in particular. Not only has it included them in a separate category in the Charter; it also actively protects them - as with competition policy – or actively encourages consumers to claim them.
Sometimes these categories overlap. For instance, the freedom of movement of labour is also a civil right that allows citizens to stay and seek work in another Member State. The right to medical care in another Member State can be seen as a social (role of patient) as well as an economic (role of consumer) right.
Citizenship not only entails rights, but also duties and obligations. The right to privacy is counterbalanced by the duty to respect the privacy of others, the right to protection against fraud by the obligation not to cheat others, the right to political representation by the duty to pay (taxes) and obey the law, the right to social benefits by the duty to contribute and to give something to society in return.
Thirdly, citizenship rights and duties affect various categories of citizens differently.
Females and males, youngsters and the elderly, insiders (e.g. EU nationals) and outsiders (e.g. third country nationals) are affected differently by the rules and regulations pertaining to citizenship. An additional, useful distinction was therefore made between categories of subjects entitled to rights, often, but not exclusively, on the basis of ascribed status i.e. personal characteristics that are usually not chosen and/or difficult to change (unlike societal roles) such as: gender, race, place of birth, original nationality, very young or very old age, mother tongue, sexual orientation, religion or the lack thereof, disability and acquired level of education. People from different categories and in different roles may have different requirements as to rights pertaining to access to various items such as access to: territory/public space, survival, safety and security, family life, healthcare, food, water, employment, income, education, information, respect, privacy, nondiscrimination, the practice of religion, be understood in their own language, etc.
It stays a paradox of citizenship that though it aimed at abandoning inequality, it created a new one. It made a distinction between citizens with rights and non-citizens without them. Furthermore, there is a difference between law and practice, between having formal rights and having the opportunity to exercise them in practice. The capacity to access such rights is likely to depend on the social and/or the economic position of individuals in society. Thus classic socio-economic distinctions based on ascribed statuses such as gender, race, age or health, or achieved statuses based on education level, mastery of the dominant language, position on the labour market or prosperity are likely to affect the importance of, and access to, specific citizenship rights. These social and economic characteristics can, on the one hand, create specific barriers to the exercise of these rights. Conversely, in order to correct for inequalities stemming from such different social and economic positions, societies may have created specific rights for these categories. Affirmative action is a common example i.e. socio-economic position affects the translation of rules into practices - the ease of exercising formally given rights - and may raise specific barriers to the exercising of these rights. Conversely this socio-economic position may also have produced privileged access in order to compensate for disadvantages.
Fourthly, these different categories of citizens may experience multiple barriers to the exercise of citizenship rights, whereby we again made a distinction between legal barriers, such as contradictions and rankings between different kinds of rights, and societal barriers, such as differences in political, administrative, legal and social institutions, financial constraints administrative or bureaucratic hurdles, linguistic barriers and a lack of solidarity across countries.
2.2 Objectives
The bEUcitizen project set out to identify, investigate, discuss, and ameliorate the barriers to the active use of rights (and knowledge of duties, the concomitant to rights, in so far as there are any) by European citizens. The project aimed to provide a comparative overview and classification of the various barriers to the exercise of the rights and obligations of European Union citizens in the member states. Simultaneously, the project analysed whether and how such barriers can be overcome and the future opportunities and challenges the European Union and its member states face to further develop the idea and reality of European Union citizenship.
By deconstructing citizenship as such, by concentrating on the interactions between rules and practices and through a combination of historical and comparative methodologies, the bEUcitizen project aimed to develop a set of alternative scenarios for the future of EU citizenship.
Furthermore, the main objective of the project was to provide input for policy formulation, development and implementation, and - more broadly – to raise awareness among citizens of their rights and obligations in the Member States and their exercising of these rights whether they live inside or outside the EU. Relevant academic communities, stakeholders and practitioners have been involved throughout the project life-cycle for the purpose of integrating their insights into the empirical as well as theoretical inquiry.
The bEUcitizen project has sought to make an impact on several different levels:
1. Academic impact: by means of annual academic conferences with consortium members and external academics and of publications in academic journals and presentations at seminars and conferences, the projects provided cross-national scientific knowledge about how to further enhance and expand EU citizenship, thereby building on past and on-going EU-level research; by focusing on the interplay between rules and practices, it boosted academic research on EU citizenship;
2. Impact policymakers: through the organization of meetings with experts, members of the Consortium and of the Advisory Board, stakeholders and policy advisers, recommendations were developed to support the awareness and exercising of citizens’ rights in Europe and to remove barriers. Case studies of the various citizenship domains and for various categories of citizens, such as insiders, outsiders, the young, old, men and women provided the necessary input. Furthermore, experiences from the past and from other multi-ethnic and (con)federal states were used to develop future models of the European Union, in which all citizens, including the young, can participate.
3. Impact for citizens: one of the main, if not the principal, aspect of the project has been to identify ways in which citizens become aware of and can be encouraged to exercise their rights. To this end, a broad array of channels have been implemented to reach the widest audience possible (not only old and new social media, but we also developed a set of teaching packages for secondary school pupils, a set of five videos and we collaborated with visual artists);
4. methodological impact: by combining the normative and empirical disciplines, bEUcitizen also combined and integrated diverse methodological paradigms, tools and instruments. Taking into consideration that EU citizenship is not only a legal principle but also a social practice as well as a historical process, the methodological challenge of the programme was to raise mutual understanding among scholars with different backgrounds and from different disciplines, to share different methodological approach, to implement a truly multidisciplinary approach to the multidimensional character of citizenship, and to sustain substantial coherence to the project.
Project Results:
3.1 Overview
The bEUcitizen project was divided into 12 Work Packages: one managerial (WP1), whose main objective was to administer the entire project and coordinate the on-going work among all partners and with the European Commission services; one for disseminating information about the project, its objectives and results and for promoting the use of its foreground (WP12); ten scientific work packages divided into four clusters.
The key findings of the bEUcitizen research project can be summarized as follow:
• We need to look beyond a ‘one-size-fits-all’ EU citizenship. Local, urban and regional citizenship are useful models and can be combined with national and EU citizenship to offer a more embedded and responsive set of rights and duties.
• The social rights of EU citizens vary significantly as a result of different welfare systems in Member States. The social rights of EU migrant citizens are largely determined by the respective countries of origin and destination. The introduction of a European Minimum Income Scheme could be an effective policy to address some of the shortcomings of the system.
• The civil rights of EU citizens are protected by a confusing framework – but it leaves non-mobile citizens, LGBTI and third-country citizens with very little protection under EU law. Fundamental rights should be placed at the core of EU citizenship: this will require a radical overhaul of the EU Treaty.
• The political rights of EU citizens are underdeveloped and should be strengthened. We need more forms of direct democracy – such as referenda (under certain circumstances) - and greater powers for the European Parliament.
• While the economic rights of EU citizens are relatively well-developed, a greater focus on the Digital Single Market could further boost access to economic rights and overcome problems related to mobility. But for economic rights to be sustainable, they need to be socially embedded and balanced with other citizenship rights.
• Different categories of EU citizens have different access to EU rights. The EU must focus on how to manage the fallout of growing social, economic and political polarisation and the increasing numbers of poor people. There must be more emphasis on providing greater security for ‘outsiders’ and the ‘marginalised’, irrespective of their place of residence or their position in the labour market.
• Migrant care workers (usually women) are in a particularly vulnerable position in the EU. New laws need to be adopted which address funding issues for child care, and care of the elderly and disabled people.
• Multilingualism is of crucial importance, but may lead to substantial barriers to citizenship rights. The EU should therefore foster a general languages policy that balances linguistic diversity with European integration.
• The future of European citizenship is closely connected to the future of democracy in Europe. For many years, European integration was deemed a success story: member states pooled many decision-making powers and yet retained their essential sovereignty; and EU member states have not been at war with one another for more than seventy years. Political bargaining and a European legal framework replaced violent conflict to solve disputes. And the creation of the Common Market fostered economic growth. But by the time we were hit with the Euro crisis nearly ten years ago, this narrative had lost its legitimacy. Citizens now perceive European piecemeal integration as undemocratic. Many citizens feel rules are now imposed on them by an external agent – with ‘Brussels’ depicted as the demon. If EU citizenship is to win back its legitimacy, there must now be broader public discussion on and greater political imagination around how to insert more democracy back into the system.
3.2 Work Package ‘Conceptual & Synthesis’ (WP2)
Work undertaken and main results
The first task and aim of WP2 was to further elaborate the project design and to provide substantive coherence and integration of the project by ‘building bridges’ between theoretical and empirical work; between the fields of literature in the disciplines involved in our citizenship debate (law, philosophy, social and political science and history) and between the work done in the various work packages. It resulted in two research working papers: Deliverable 2.1 and Deliverable 2.2 (see also below). These working papers were first of all for internal use, to inspire and direct the work of the participants in the concrete tasks in the various work packages. With regard to this task, the 2016 Annual Conference in Oviedo was pivotal in bringing together the knowledge from the different Work Packages and in re-interpreting the major research questions of the project in light of the current results. Moreover, the cross-cutting themes that are the basis for Deliverable 2.3 were also elaborated further, substantially and conceptually.
At the same time, this Work Package was meant to synthesize the project findings (task 2.2).
The aim of this synthesis was first of all to provide general and comprehensive but also well-elaborated answers to the main research questions of the whole project. This resulted in the first volume of the bEUcitizen book series (the so called “Vertical Book”): “Moving beyond barriers: prospects for EU citizenship?” (Deliverable 2.4) which identifies, analyses and compares a variety of possible ‘barriers’ to the exercise of European citizenship and discusses ways to move beyond these barriers. The plan for the book follows the outline of the bEUcitizen research program in which a conceptual analysis has been followed by research according to a matrix of themes: the respective rights (economic, social, political and civil) in combination with a focus on categories of citizens (gender and generations, insiders and outsiders). Each of these rights and categories are substantiated by in-depth research on policies and practices of social, legal and political institutional settings and its effects for citizens’ rights, formal, informal and substantial. The authors of the respective chapters are the coordinators of each of the ‘work packages’ that made up the research program. The book therefore presents the summarized results of this four year project.
Secondly, the project results were synthesized around a number of topics, which are central in past and current citizenship debates and that are very relevant to the bEUcitizen project. Each topic is the subject of a chapter of the final concluding volume titled “Reconsidering EU citizenship: contradictions and constraints” (the “Horizontal Book” or Deliverable 2.3). The plan for the book first started from its internal use in the huge and pluralistic bEUcitizen-consortium: various participants have identified, described and elaborated a number of crosscutting topics concerning EU-citizenship, which have been subject of academic scholarship and debates and which also ran through the research of our ‘work packages’ and various disciplines. These topics were developed as an internal publication in the first year of the project (Deliverable D 2.1.) which was meant to deliver input to all project participants so that they may be sensitive to finding – facts, legislation, case law, events, developments, tensions and conflicts – that might be relevant for these debates. In the final period of the project the authors of the topic-chapters have gathered input from the various ‘work packages’ and publications to enrich their first theoretical drafts regarding specific topics. They have elaborate their final drafts into chapters of this book in which the relevance of our project findings for these topics of existing and recent ‘scholarship’ are presented.
3.3 Work Package “Historical Development of Citizenship” (WP3)
Work Undertaken
WP3 was divided into 7 tasks examining pre-modern citizenship and its European pathways.
Beginning with Task 3.1 the scale and operation of urban citizenship before 1800 was evaluated. The task was the collection of data on numbers of masters and apprentices relative to total population and size of the trade. Drawing on evidence collected for over 30 European cities between 1550 and 1800, deliverable 3.1 showed that in general about half of urban households were headed by a citizen, with some cities reaching rates of 75 percent. Citizenship was more broadly held in historic Europe than has been appreciated; in the 19th century, access to such citizenship rights as voting was often lower than the rates observed in cities in the 17th century. It was only in the 20th century that citizenship rates exceeded pre-modern levels.
Task 3.2 was the collection of data on formal and informal barriers to citizenship and trades. Data was successfully collected from an extensive sample of towns and cities (n=61) that contained a wide range of guilds (n=321) in France, the Low Countries, England, and German Europe. In deliverable 3.2 WP3 shows that barriers to citizenship based on personal traits, particularly gender, but also religion and place of origin had an exclusionary character, and entry fees were also generally biased to favor insiders, such as local children. However, for the most part, guild and city formal barriers were low enough that they could be comfortably overcome by men with skills, resources or persistence, which is consistent with the results of D3.1. Barriers existed but they were more permeable than has been recognized.
Task 3.3 focused on the collection of data on the social and geographical backgrounds of citizens and aspirant citizens. Using this, in deliverables 3.3 and 3.8 WP3 compared the exclusivity of guilds and citizenship regimes across several European cities, measured by the share of new entrants possessing father-son ties or local geographical connections. This paper looked at the outcomes of citizen barriers measured in 3.2. No consistent evidence of exclusion was found. A large share of premodern citizenship and guild regimes were in fact quite ‘open’ to outsiders. The great majority of cities and guilds allowed in-migration on a large scale. They were not fortresses, but rather island nations, with a heavy flow of movement between them. The impact of barriers to citizenship in limiting economic rights was relatively modest in early modern Europe.
In Task 3.4 the project turned to the relationship between citizenship and human capital. The task concerned the collection of data on early exits from apprenticeship, across a range of locations in France, England and the Northern Netherland. Analyzed in deliverable 3.4. it was found that although Europe’s youths invested substantial amounts of time and money in obtaining skills through apprenticeship, they were not tightly locked into the contracts that they agreed to. Early exits were commonplace across quite different guild/citizenship regimes. Guilds and cities supported flexible training systems. This is the first comparative analysis of this phenomenon and suggests strongly that apprenticeship thrived as a mechanism to generate human capital because it allowed for agreements to be renegotiated and abandoned.
Task 3.5 centered on the collection of data on formal and informal characteristics of apprenticeship contracts, providing the first comparative study of contractual forms for premodern servitude across the continent (synthesized into deliverable 3.5). Across much of Europe, contracts between masters and youths were similar, private agreements. Differences reflected variations in labour markets. City authorities underpinned contractual performance. There is no evidence that different trajectories in citizenship norms produced significant variation in training across the continent.
Finally, Task 3.6 looked at the transition from premodern to national citizenship. It focused on the collection of data on regulatory mechanisms replacing the guilds after they were abolished, addressing a 19th-century institutional ‘gap’ about which little is known. Several recent analyses have sought to explain differences in citizenship between Western countries, particularly the strength of corporatist systems, through differences in the persistence of guild traditions. In deliverable 3.6 WP3 produced a detailed sectoral analysis of regulatory developments in industries in Germany, the Netherlands and England - three points across the spectrum of European political economy. The paper showed that a simple connection between durable guilds and modern corporatism (often associated with Germany, for example) is not a satisfactory explanation for the later shape of citizenship structures. In several cases ‘old’ and ‘new’ regulatory mechanisms were, if not reconciled, at least combined. While guild legacies do matter, their impact on modern political economy depended heavily on the patterns of economic development and approach taken by political elites in each country.
Task 3.7 is the synthesis of the results, which has taken several forms. Two workshops in Oxford and Utrecht have generated two – rather than the planned single – edited volumes. In addition, chapters synthesizing the project’s results will appear in the two project books.
Main results
Looking from a historical perspective, the open and extensive pattern of pre-modern European citizenship is particularly striking, as is the persistence of variation across the nineteenth century. Citizenship may look superficially the same in Europe. But the socio-economic dimensions of citizenship developed along different trajectories, even when countries were experiencing similar transformations in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The main results and recommendations of WP3 can be summarized as follow:
1. Europe has a long tradition of local citizenship arrangements with a good track record in terms of accessibility and performance.
2. Europe has never had a unified citizenship model that applies in all EU countries.
National citizenship contained marked and persistent variations between countries.
Modern citizenship is the product of a revolution (1789) and decades of contestation in its wake. Local citizenship was not simply abolished. Elements were accommodated and persisted within national citizenship. If the EU aims to introduce its own citizenship model, it should expect a protracted struggle, because of interests currently vested in other forms of citizenship, and should not anticipate cleanly replacing existing arrangements.
WP3’s first result suggests that an alternative strategy can work successfully. Local forms of citizenship do not inevitably generate closed, selfish communities. Premodern Europe offers a model of ‘layered’ or ‘nested’ citizenship. Applied today, enabling complementary forms of citizenships, including local citizenship, would permit a combination, but also variation, of rights and practices to co-exist. In such a variegated citizenship landscape, it would be easier for the EU to establish its own citizenship contribution, based on an understanding of what the EU is and is not providing to its citizens. Rather than attempting to scale-up national citizenship, the EU might consider supporting the institutional diversity that is, historically, a hallmark of Europe.
WP3’s second result demonstrates that there is no uniform European model of national citizenship that can be reduced to a common set of legal principles ready to apply by EU institutions. By implication, attempts to synthesize an EU citizenship from the shared features of Member States’ national citizenship are unlikely to succeed. Underlying Europe’s various citizenship regimes is, nonetheless, a common set of social values that the EU might want to connect to more intensely. For the best part of a millennium, citizenship in Europe has been associated with equality, freedom and solidarity. In the present debates about migration, the Euro-crisis, and international insecurity, re-affirming such principles could help focus the EU’s various policy domains.
3.4 Work Package “Other Countries with Multi-Layered Citizenship and/or Rivalling Citizenship Claims” (WP4)
Work Undertaken
In the field of citizenship the EU, as a multi-national entity, faces problems that have been experienced by multi-ethnic and (con)federal states for decades, sometimes centuries.
Varying linguistic, ethnic, religious and civic identities have led to competing understandings and claims to citizenship. Accordingly, questions such as Who has the citizenship status (and how it is acquired) or What type of rights are citizens from different ‘categories’ entitled to, have been and still are part of the discussion almost everywhere. To date, and apart from a legal perspective, few studies have benefited from this rich set of experiences and practices to shed light on potential futures for EU citizenship.
Work Package 4 was divided into 10 tasks:
Task 4.1 provided with a theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of the individual case studies and established the conceptual bases for later comparison of the case studies in task 4.10 which resulted in deliverable 4.10 providing a succinct summary of the case studies focussing on the lessons they contain for the European Union, and in the final manuscript “Citizenship in segmented societies: lessons for the EU” (deliverable 4.11).
Within tasks 4.2 – 4.9 WP4 analysed a selection of countries (Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey) representative of different types of problems experienced due to multiple and rivalling identities of groups of citizens, as well as representative of different types of social, legal and political solutions tried.
This broad range of cases was studied from a historical, political and sociological perspective, by attempting to understand how different communities have in practice accommodated together into a single citizenship. Thanks to this approach, WP4 provided and assessment of how similar problems to those challenging the EU today have been faced by other political entities and of potential developments for EU citizenship.
Main results
The cases studied in Work Package 4 reveal two fundamentally different paths of addressing rival claims stemming from diversity and delivering solutions to respond to the communities’ claims.
A first path consists in emphasizing and protecting differences, whereas at the same time building a common set of institutions and values that encompasses all communities within the territory. Canada, Switzerland, and Spain – although with different degrees of success and acceptance of the ‘other’ communities – are examples in this regard. The second path consists in emphasizing and protecting unity and homogeneity, whereas at the same time trying to minimize differences. Again with different degrees of success, Czechia, Estonia, 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 trying to build an overarching layer of common institutions upheld by the identification of citizens with political institutions and procedures, as opposed to ethnic, linguistic or other cultural markers of identity. For this reason, the useful models for the EU are Canada and Switzerland. But there are also interesting findings concerning the unitary states that should be put forward. While it is true that the strategy of de-complexification was neither successful in creating a homogenous cultural nation in Estonia, Turkey or Czechia, nor is it in line with the declared values of the European union, some lessons can be drawn from the analyses of unitary states. The findings concerning the Kurdish community in Turkey show that a diversified political identity can be gradually construed within a unitary state, because not all issues that concern individual citizens relate to ethnicity and also the unitary nation-state can accommodate claims by producing and protecting public goods and common goods. Although Turkey has not been successful in accommodating Kurdish claims in this manner, the example shows that accommodation by conferring collective political rights to communities does not do justice to the diversified claims in differentiated modern societies either because the collectives, once recognized, contain new minorities and dissident individuals. Hence, both unitary and federal arrangements need to build common political institutions and they need to combine collective political and general individual rights with the production of public goods. It is not the case that the federalist model offers the total solution without the guarantee of individual rights, especially also the rights of individuals belonging to minorities in collective sub-units. How individual and collective political rights can be balanced is something that both unitary and federal states struggle with from different starting points. If nothing more, the Czech and Estonian cases show how this balance can be better achieved at local levels where pragmatic solutions are more immediately at hand. But in both cases the pressure of the overall pressure of the EU is an important ingredient. The Turkish case shows that redefining the nation in political terms can give a society some mileage in gaining ethnic minorities over to the political project of the majority ethnicity, but if the political nation is not defined by consensual strategies and forced into being by linguistic repression, among other things, the claims and grievances will remain vibrant and violence will not disappear.
In sum, what is probably to be considered as the best institutional practice is a federal model that deals with the problem that its sub-units might replicate the homogenization of the unitary state at lower levels with the organization of intermediary structures that bundle crosscutting interests and an overarching structure that guarantees a standard of general individual rights.
Regarding the non-territorialized communities, several solutions have been tried in WP4 cases.
As for the Roma community, the Czech case shows that the local and the European levels are the most effective in promoting Roma rights. Stigmatization of Roma as passive victims is negative for the protection of Roma rights; policies should be aimed at activating (socially and politically) the Roma community. Related to the migrant population, the Swiss case has shown that Swiss movers (the insiders, the equivalent to the EU movers) experience difficulties related to different languages and education/job systems. These issues have been dealt with at the federal level by trying to coordinate in specific policy areas such as education. Yet, the Swiss state continues to promote commuting instead of moving, which helps maintain cantonal autonomy in policy-making in identity-sensitive matters. As for the outsiders (the equivalent of the non-EU migrants), the Canadian case has applied a strong policy of control of immigration (in numbers) in coordination with the provinces, at the same time it has put in place policies of non-stigmatization of immigrants (to the contrary migrants are very much appreciated in Canada as they increase the richness of the country).
As this WP’s comparative studies show, the EU has tried to accommodate much greater diversity in much less time than any of the examples studied. The lack of stability and crisis-proneness of the EU system hence comes with no surprise. A second main finding is that the EU has tried to build identity via mobility whereas successful multinational identity building projects elsewhere in Canada and Switzerland have focused on the political autonomy and self-determination of the constituent parts while guaranteeing only formal freedoms of mobility and residence. The latter should certainly not be abolished in the EU, but it should also no longer be considered the overarching paradigm of European citizenship. As the overarching political structure the EU needs to be perceived as a guarantee and reinforcement of its constituent political entities. Formal freedom of movement notwithstanding, not every barrier to mobility is a barrier to European citizenship if the barrier is the consequence of the recognition of self-government of the constituent powers. Removing all the barriers to mobility would mean to undermine the consensus under which the EU is possible.
3.5 Work Package “Economic Rights” (WP5)
Work undertaken and main results
The first task of WP5 was the categorization of economic rights, which resulted in Deliverable 5.1. This report, which contains the key findings of this WP, gives a general overview of the concept “economic rights” in view of providing its identification and classification in the different legal systems. Key findings showed that at the national level property, labour, and economic enterprise are the three main areas in which economic rights can be recognized. However, differently from what is happening at the European level, where the EU has not only put the emphasis on economic rights, but has also actively promoted them (by actively promoting consumers to claim their rights), these rights do not compose a stable category in the national systems, because their legal recognition and/or constitutional status depends on the economic order in the relevant Member State and, related to this, on historical developments.
The second task looked at the transposition of the relevant EU instruments in several Member States and the resulting report describes the way in which EU instruments relevant to the rights mentioned under Deliverable 5.1 have been transposed into the national laws of some Member states and which problems occur for citizens in exercising these rights. It particularly focuses on three topics, which form the content of the case studies (task 5.3 see below), i.e. the protection of economic rights of consumers, the protection of citizens’ rights in the digital era and the regulation of professional qualifications. The research carried out uncovered that there are important differences among the various Member States in the implementation of EU instruments. Furthermore, it is interesting to see that differences do exist even among Member states that are geographically nearby, and in some cases even similar in their legal traditions. Indeed, the difficulties that citizens face in exercising economic rights differ rather substantially. For instance, in the Netherlands these obstacles proved to be of minor importance and this is due to the relative ‘openness’ of the Dutch economy and labour market. WP5 also acknowledged that obstacles to the exercise of economic rights range from legal barriers to more administrative and practical barriers. Moreover, informal barriers in the form of cultural ‘unspoken rules’ also affect the enjoyment of citizens’ economic rights.
In task 5.3 a cross-national study was conducted via three in-depth case studies, focusing on a specific area of economic rights:
(i) the barriers that professionals face in gaining access to the services markets in other Member States. The report focuses on the barriers to the recognition of EU citizens’ professional qualifications but also on related issues that could constitute an obstacle, such as legal, administrative, linguistic, digital and other practical barriers in five professional fields (lawyers, midwives, hairdressers, care givers/in-home nurses, and tourist guides). Language has been identified as a serious practical and legal barrier, both in terms of communication with national authorities, and in terms of proficiency requirements for gaining access to certain professions.
(ii) the capacity of the consumer to process information and make informed choices in the digital internal market. The findings show that there are five different challenges to be overcome, which start at the level of implementation of the EU legislation. Secondly, there is a lack of trust in (foreign) webshops. Thirdly, there are different rules in the Member States on contracts between businesses and consumers in case of e-commerce. Fourthly, in the Digital Single Market attention should also be drawn to the social rights of employees working in the e-commerce sector. Lastly, payment methods vary across member States.
(iii) the barriers that citizens face in managing, protecting and exercising their intellectual property rights in Europe. Here legal barriers to the exercise of economic rights can, for instance, be found in the absence of a unitary title of copyright at EU level, which has a negative impact on the proper functioning of the EU Single Market and on competition with US companies.
Finally, in Task 5.4 WP5 conducted a cross-task analysis of the specific practical linguistic barriers that economically active EU citizens and third-country nationals face in exercising their rights to free movement, which resulted in Deliverable 5.6.
WP5 observed that the EU’s multilingualism constitutes a barrier to the exercise of economic rights for citizens. On the one hand, language requirements may be essential in safeguarding economic rights of citizens, as knowledge of the language is crucial for traders and workers to be able to successfully access the market of another Member State. On the other hand, States are free to regulate the use of language(s) and set specific requirements, which leads to restrictions on free movement. The lack of a unitary language certificate at EU level, for instance, causes barriers to the exercise of economic rights. The European Union should thus foster a comprehensive linguistic policy with a view to prevent disproportionate national barriers to the exercise of economic rights of European Union citizens.
Moreover, within task 5.4 WP5 compiled a book titled “EU citizens’ economic rights in action” (Deliverable 5.7) which has been accepted for publication by Edward Elgar Publishing.
Policy recommendations:
Specific actions need to be properly and simultaneously taken into account in order to actively promote economic rights and to overcome barriers that still exist, which are mentioned in the policy brief “Reinforcing economic rights of EU citizens. Policy scenarios and recommendations from bEUcitizen, a research project on the barriers to realise and exercise citizenship rights by European Union citizens” (available here).
Firstly, the realization of ‘socially embedded’ economic rights and an emphasis on the collective dimension of economic rights, horizontal subsidiarity and recognition of common goods are important to make the internal market more sustainable. There are various ways for the European Union to strengthen the social dimension of the internal market. One way to achieve this is by carrying out a social impact assessment of its policies in the field of the internal market.
Secondly, the potential of the Digital Single Market must be recognized. It may represent a ‘commuting model’ more profiled on increasing cross-border sale and purchase of goods rather than on the mobility of citizens, while at the same time offering the opportunity to promote social and civil rights.
Thirdly. copyright rules should be harmonized, modernized and updated to current needs in order to properly boost intellectual property rights.
And lastly, a more comprehensive and coherent language policy is needed in order to reduce linguistic barriers; this could be done within the context of educational policies, which promote and increase a truly plurilingual environment. At the same time, the adoption of an EU language certificate could prevent the clash among national – regional language requirements and freedom of movement.
3.6 Work Package “Social Rights” (WP6)
Work undertaken
The first task of the work package concerned the answering of a questionnaire addressing obstacles to access social rights in selected EU Member States and it resulted in Deliverable 6.1 which provides a thorough inside in the obstacles to social rights. The national reports (Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden), on which D6.1 is based, showed a high degree of variance regarding the political discourses associated with EU citizenship and social rights and policies available for EU citizens in the areas of social assistance, housing, health and education.
Based on the answers to the questionnaire mentioned in Task 6.1 the second task studied how European Union instruments relevant to these rights have been transposed into national law and practice in the selected EU Member States and it confronted these findings with the applicable EU law (Citizenship Directive, Regulation 492/2011) and instruments of the Council of Europe. Then it was analysed which legal provisions function as a barrier for access to social rights and whether these are allowed by EU law. This critical analysis showed that there are differences in approaches and it was attempted to show a link between these differences and their impact on the barriers for EU citizens.
Task 6.3 a comparative study of how in social rights are subdivided into categories, concerned the nature of social rights. For this purpose national rapporteurs had to write an analysis of their system and had to have several interviews with stakeholders in various areas. The comprehensive report shows that there is no unanimity among policy actors as to the meaning of social rights and that the discourse and understanding of social rights is as variable within European countries as it is between them. The development of social policy is not grounded in a shared understanding of social rights. This is very helpful for making further recommendations and to combine the outcomes of D 6.1 6.2 and 6-4.
Thereafter, Work Package 6 looked at the possibilities and impediments of citizens seeking to enforce their social rights (task 6.4). National rapporteurs worked on national reports, based on a questionnaire, and the results were combined in the final comprehensive report (Deliverable 6.4) on legal protection of social rights. This research showed the large differences in the ways persons can (or cannot) realize their social rights and was used for making recommendations for taking away barriers.
Finally, within Task 6.5 WP6 compiled a book with a comparative analysis and theory of legal and sociological concepts and theories on the relationship between EU citizenship and social rights. This book is now submitted to Edward Elgar Publishing, after having been reviewed by a peer reviewer.
The book, titled European Citizenship and Social Rights: Entitlements and Impediments to Accessing Welfare and edited by Frans Pennings and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, gives an overview of the problems and tensions that occur when citizens claim welfare rights, in particular for EU nationals in a country different from their country of origin.
Main results
WP6 observed that social rights in the EU continue to be primarily determined by decisions at the nation-state level. Member States pursue very different approaches to social rights, leading to highly divergent outcomes. In addition, many countries pursue austerity policies that have led to stagnating or declining incomes for many citizens in South-Europe and an increase in poverty. In a number of Member States EU migrant citizens have been characterized within the political discourse as ‘poverty migrants’ or ‘benefit tourists’ who are taking advantage of the generous welfare system in the destination country. Moreover, populist parties tend to blame the EU for the many economic challenges and suggest that ‘national closure’ or the ‘control over our national borders’ would provide new opportunities for those who have been left behind by economic developments.
Although the EU continues to be a territorial entity with comparatively low levels of inequality and poverty from a global perspective, the EU institutions and Member States have to demonstrate to their citizens that European integration is not primarily about market integration, but benefits ordinary people and provides them with social rights. The initiative by the Commission for establishing a Social Rights Pillar within the aquis communautaire as well as the recent proposals to reform the system of social security coordination are an important recognition by the institutions that more needs to be done within the social domain; nevertheless, these initiatives seem insufficient to address the feelings and circumstances among socio-economically disadvantaged voters, or those who perceive themselves as being left behind.
Whilst Europe needs to develop a plethora of measures to develop a Social Europe that is worth its name, e.g. automatic fiscal stabilisers to absorb the effects of asymmetric shocks within the currency union, a bold step into the direction of a Social Europe could be the introduction of a European Minimum Income Scheme (Bruzelius/Reinprecht/Seeleib-Kaiser 2017, see also WP6 Policy brief Limited Social Rights And The Case For A European Minimum Income Scheme). Without bold action towards strengthening social rights the concept of EU citizenship is very likely to remain hollow for large proportions of the EU population with the consequence that further European disintegration and an end of the European project might become a plausible scenario.
3.7 Work Package “Civil rights” (WP7)
Work undertaken and main results
WP7 was divided into four tasks that resulted into eight deliverables:
Beginning with Task 7.1 WP7 identified which civil rights EU citizens as well as third country nationals, legally (formally) enjoy in selected Member States of the EU (i.e. Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland).
Across the EU, individuals derive civil rights from various legal sources at different levels. The main point of reference for civil rights protection in member states remains the national level. The ECHR, extensively and dynamically interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR), has gradually acquired a significant influence in defining and delimiting civil rights in Europe. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, has, until now, played a more marginal role, except where specific EU legislation adopted for the protection of fundamental rights (e.g. data protection, non-discrimination) is involved. The connection between EU citizenship and the EU Charter remains a loose one.
This diversity of sources of protection of fundamental rights is, in most cases, not so problematic, as the different systems tend to recognize and protect a similar set of civil rights and enforce usually comparable standards, whilst the ECtHR provides for minimum guarantees; yet, the scope of protection and balancing between rights (eg privacy v freedom of expression), or between civil rights and public interests or constitutional values (eg freedom of religion v secularism, security) vary from one setting to the other, as well as over time. Barriers to the effective protection of civil rights arise from the moment that individuals’ civil rights do not receive sufficient protection.
Rights without remedies risk remaining dead letter. The implementation and enforcement of EU law, including when it provides for the protection of civil rights, falls primarily on domestic institutions, including national courts. EU law provides that natural and legal persons have a right to an effective remedy before a tribunal against violations of EU law, but in practice, EU citizens and other individuals do not always enjoy accessible and effective remedies. In Task 7.2 WP7 looked at the modes of transposition and mechanisms available at European and national levels for granting and enforcing civil rights. The report covers Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Threats to important civil rights (eg right to fair trial, right to family life) sometimes results from EU instruments themselves (eg European Arrest Warrant, Brussels II regulation), and in such case, individuals can have a hard time challenging them before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). They arise from the deficient legislative and executive implementation, and faulty administrative application of EU law at national level. Individuals can challenge them before national courts, resorting to national remedies, and (some) national courts are playing an important part in addressing and correcting problematic rules and practices.
In some countries (eg Hungary), barriers to the exercise of important civil rights arise from systemic deficiencies, including problematic constitutional and legislative norms, and the absence of effective judicial remedies.
In the majority of cases, European standards and interpretation prove supportive of civil rights. The problems lie not so much in judicial interpretation, but in mal-administration and legislative omissions. A concerning phenomenon nonetheless arises out of the interaction of domestic and European legal orders: the lowering of standards with reference to European law (both EU and ECHR). The risk of a ‘race-to-the-bottom’ in terms of civil rights protection in a real one, amplified by security concerns (e.g. terrorism).
Task 7.3 was a cross-national examinations of specific barriers that EU citizens (and third-country nationals) face when exercising their civil rights through four case studies; it resulted into four deliverables, which respectively focused on the obstacles faced:
1. in exercising core citizenship rights (i.e. residence) (Deliverable 7.3)
The derivative nature of EU citizenship creates inequalities between (potential) EU citizens, at times enabling, at other times preventing, access to EU citizenship for long-term resident Third Country Nationals and their family members.
The formal transposition of the right of movement and residence of EU citizens is relatively unproblematic in most Member States. There is however an important gap between formal laws and the actual realization of the rights they grant in day-to-day practices. Certain key concepts determining the exercise of EU citizenship rights (e.g. ‘sufficient resources’ in the case of non-economically active EU citizens), are subject to varying interpretations in the different Member States. National authorities, for example, appear increasingly inclined to deny residence (and access to social benefits) to poorer mobile EU citizens, for non-compliance with the residence conditions.
2. when trying to enjoy the freedom of expression (Deliverable 7.4)
The report exposed the lack of clarity and uniformity across the EU Member States as regards the legal status of ‘citizen journalists’ in relation to professional journalists. The standards, and institutional settings, differ significantly between Member States. This diversity can prove risky for those that provide information and news across borders, and for citizens-journalists who may not be aware of the legal framework(s) under which they operate. The lack of harmonized/minimum protection of the freedom of expression of citizen-journalists contrasts with the EU position on freedom of expression in external relations
3. in dealing with life events (Deliverable 7.5)
The general report exposed the disparities between national legislations, and their (potential) impact on EU citizenship and free movement in relation to a number of life events. Parentage and parent-child relationships is, for instance, one where Member States retain great autonomy, and opted for different solutions as regards the attribution of custody rights, adoption rules, etc.. This could carry negative implications for the mobility of EU citizens and their families between Member States. There is also significant diversity in relation to the attribution and composition of forenames and surnames. Similarly, the absence of uniform rules on marriage (e.g. gender, age, consent and forms) whereas an act facilitating legal residence in the EU or access to the nationality of a Member State (and consequently, Union citizenship) creates unequal opportunities across the EU. Moreover, whilst there are EU rules requiring a registrar to control the legality of acts before recording them in the registry, this control is generally made according to the applicable family law and (international) private law rules, which impacts free movement. .
4. in gaining access to travel documents”(Deliverable 7.6)
The report reveals that for EU citizens residing in a Member State different than their own, the procedure for obtaining these documents can be cumbersome and time consuming, as well as more costly (although not significantly). There are also particular challenges related to obtaining ID cards or passports for EU children born outside of their country of origin (delays in obtaining birth certificate, certified translations, etc.). The delays and complications caused by translation requirements should be alleviated with the coming into force of Regulation (EU) 2016/1191. In some quarters, citizens experience difficulties in understanding the complexity of the framework for obtaining travel documents, which calls for improving information. Moreover, concerns related to privacy have been raised in relation to the introduction of biometric features.
Finally, Task 7.4 is the synthesis of the results, which took two forms:
1. a cross-task analysis outlined the key-findings of all tasks, and identified common trends (deliverable 7.4).
The study revealed that the rights of EU citizens and their effectiveness are highly contingent on the national level and all that is conferred in top-down fashion can easily be jeopardised through mis-implementation and faulty application, whether intentionally or negligently. Furthermore, in several respects it emerged that in the exercise of civil rights, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights currently still lacks the maturity of the ECHR, though its importance is visibly growing. Lastly, to a considerable extent the obstacles to the exercise of civil rights result from social and cultural preferences in domains that lie close to the (perceived) national sovereign realm.
2. WP7 final manuscript “Civil Rights and EU Citizenship: Challenges at the cross-roads of European, national and private sphere” , which will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing.
Based on the findings of the project, the following policy recommendations can be made:
- Further develop and consolidate a ‘one-stop shop’ multi-lingual EU information, advice and problem-solving platform, to help EU citizens better the scope and limits of EU (citizens) rights and help them identify appropriate redress mechanisms; develop an interactive problem-identifying and solving tool (rights, remedies and support structures);
- Where competences exists (eg cross-border dimension), adoption of EU legislation setting out the (minimum) rights and obligations of EU citizens (eg citizen-journalists);
- Further EU guidance on important concepts (eg sufficient resources, durable relationship, scope of application of EU law, etc) which determine the application of EU rights;
- More systemic use of the infringement procedure to address administrative implementation and practical application problems of EU rights;
- Facilitate and encourage the use of the complaint form by individuals and NGOs to detect ‘systematic’ violations of EU rights;
- More rigorous scrutinuty of EU legislation for compatibility with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, in particular in sensitive areas;
- Reinforced EU monitoring of member states’ human rights performance, in collaboration between the FRA, Council of Europe bodies, human rights’ bodies, and NGOs;
- Pursuing formal (infringement actions) and informal mechanisms to address systemic Charter rights violations in member states (eg funding conditionality);
- Greater involvement of NGOs in EU policy and legislative and implementation processes;
- Financially support NGOs which assist victims of violations of EU rights, or generally contribute to holding states accountable for human rights violations;
- Further efforts to facilate the cross-border recognition of civil status documents.
3.8 Work Package “ Political Rights” (WP8)
Work undertaken and main results
The first objective of WP8 was to examine whether and to what extent the EU can be considered a source of limits to the exercise of old national political rights by emphasizing economic and other non-political rights of European citizens. In light of this first objective, the research carried out under Task 1 (Deliverable 8.1 Constraints imposed by Financial Markets on Political Choice in the EU’), showed that financial market constraints coupled with technocratic elements of EU decision-making can impose limitations on political choice both at the EU and member state levels, in particular in times of crisis. This constitutes an important challenge for the meaningful exercise of European political citizenship. The report shows the dominance of executive actors in EU-level and member states decision-making and the influential role of a transnational technocratic elite. In particular the exercise of parliamentary control at the national level is challenged. We also looked at the constraints imposed by competition rules on the process of democratic empowerment of citizens in the EU (task 8.2). Research showed 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. 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. Task 8.3 dealt with Regulation by litigation as a form of Empowerment. Do consumers and companies increasingly litigate to better enforce or even create consumer rights? This trend may empower individual citizens as consumers vis-à-vis companies, or the other way around. In the process however, national democratically accountable political actors might lose power, and hence their voters. Nevertheless, there is barely evidence on public interest litigation in the European Union. Contrary to influential concepts of “Eurolegalism”, public interest litigation in Europe is still very much entangled in national institutions.
The research allowed us to draw the following policy recommendations: first, to institutionalize procedures for public participation and parliamentary review and engagement during crises; second, to set some study groups and set criteria for discussion the role of the "firm in society"; third, to examine the institutional constraints on public litigation in Europe in order to strengthen its benefits.
The second objective of WP8 was to examine how effective the newly created democratic rights by the EU at the European level are: whether they are actually being used, by whom and for what purposes, and what may be the more practical obstacles to their exercise. To reach this objective, research was divided into 6 tasks: Task 8.4 focused on the involvement of national parliaments in the political system of the European Union and it analysed the ability of the national parliaments to establish a collective institution in order to carry out tasks which were assigned them by the Lisbon Treaty. As its main finding, the analysis revealed that national parliaments failed in period 2010-14 to establish effective collective institution. This failure substantially affecting parliaments´ ability to deliver more democracy to the EU political system is explained by huge institutional variety across chambers and parliaments. Moreover, the analysis found out that if the cooperation takes place, it is particularly shaped by technocratic and expertise factors limiting involvement of political actors. Task 8.5 dealt with democratic parliamentary control in times of crisis. The report provided a comparative analysis which tests the analytical framework that was advanced in task 8.1. In relation to each country setting it is shown that the limitation of viable political alternatives in electoral competition, the influential role of executive actors and bureaucratic transnational European elites as well as secrecy practices and in some cases the lack of appropriate accountability structures restrict the meaningful exercise of European political citizenship. Task 8.6 focused on the political inequality in the European Union and the role the European Parliament can play in the process of democratic empowerment of EU citizens. The findings show that low turnout is related to social inequality of voting. Socially weak EU-citizens are overrepresented in the group of non-voters. This in turn creates inequality in the democratic representation of social interests in the EP and European politics. On this basis it is argued that political equality as precondition for democratic empowerment of EU citizens needs institutional reform and politicization of social issues. It is wildly held that the political inequality among EU-citizens is related to the EU’s current institutional architecture. Also direct democracy in the European Union was investigated (task 8.7) One of the solutions proposed by scholars to deal with the alleged democratic deficit of the European Union is to favour direct participation of EU citizens in decision-making at the European level.
The European Citizens Initiative was the object of a comparative analysis under task 8.8. Taking stock of the EU’s most recent democratic innovation, the European Citizens Initiative (ECI), WP8 evaluated its potential to live up to its democratic potential. Findings suggest that the ECI is far from being unique and that some of the problems that surround its functioning are common to other systems. In addition, despite its novelty, some general patterns as well as indirect effects on member states can be detected. Whether the instrument could ever fulfil its democratic potential, let alone empowers European citizens remains very much an open question however. The evidence thus far presents a mixed picture. However, to continue develop mechanisms of public participation similar to the ECI. Task 8.9 discussed the European Ombudsman. One alternative open to individual citizens to question or even challenge government decisions in Europe is provided by the institution of the European Ombudsman. After assessing the European Ombudsman's potential to contribute to the democratic empowerment of EU citizens, researchers looked at potential barriers hindering citizens' access to the Ombudsman. In conclusion, it is argued that the European Ombudsman has a positive impact on the democratic empowerment of EU citizens while being also able to influence the legislative agenda of EU instititutions, thereby increasing their democratic accountability. It is therefore recommended to strengthen the role of the Ombudsman in public policy process and in particular increase public knowledge about its benefits to European citizens.
Finally, task 8.10 dealt with Education for a Civic Culture in the European Union. Various scholars stressed that political participation requires the backing of a political culture, a set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, perceptions and a sense of ‘identity, an expression of one’s membership in a political community’. This seems to be problematic in Europe. Its nation states, however, have over time developed vested traditions that promote citizenship, by socializing and educating people in a ‘civic culture. Research under this task compared different traditions in educating for citizenship in a selection of (old and new) Member States of the EU and showed how such an approach and practice could contribute to or hinder the development of a European civic culture.
Based on the results of the tasks falling within objective one and two, the third objective of WP8 was to explore and elaborate new future options for democratic participation and accountability in the EU. We found that the concept of EU citizenship had raised the expectation for democratic empowerment in the EU beyond the capacities of EU insertions and leadership to deliver. It is therefore not surprising the focus of the literature and the public agenda were on the "democratic deficit" of the European Union. Much less attention was paid to democratic empowerment via the EU institutions and policy process. Overall, extension of the right to participate by the EU can be seen as an instrument to increase its legitimacy (input legitimacy) rather than influencing the policy making process (output legitimacy). Influencing the policy making process in the EU is not an easy task. However, by looking at citizenship as status, which is close to the definition of European citizenship, it might be argued that these new forms did empower EU citizens and democracy and the EU. European citizens have much more opportunities today to participate in the EU policy making than before. The value of these new forms is unfortunately not clear enough, and more academic attention should be focused on the issue.
Based on the output of this work package, we could conclude that EU referenda should not be introduced without introducing direct democracy on the country levels. Country level referenda should not be introduced in a manner that is totally decoupled from the EU level. Second, even if the extensive use of referenda seems good a priori, it might lead to low turnout (and therefore in the case of the EU – low legitimacy). Unless well-entrenched in the political system, it seems more beneficial to have referenda only on the most important issues. From this perspective, it might be more advisable for the EU to only have mandatory referenda on single issues of treaty reforms (evidence on EU initiatives does however not indicate that the number of initiatives has increased dramatically since its institutionalization, but it might be too early to say). Third, European politics is consensual and can be expected to remain so if it became a semi-direct democracy. Introducing the optional referendum in secondary law making is therefore unlikely to have a transformative effect in this sense. In Switzerland, for example, it helped to constitute consensual forms of democratic politics. But the optional referendum can be expected to empower a variety of actors in different ways as intermediaries in the direct democratic process. In particular, national parliaments, the European Parliament and grassroots CSOs may be empowered by these new mechanisms of direct democracy.
The main results of the work carried out within this work package have been collected in the final manuscript “Democratic Empowerment in the European Union”, accepted for publication by Edward Elgar Publishing.
3.9 Work Package “Balancing Gender and Generational Citizenship” (WP9)
Work undertaken
The objective of WP9 was 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. WP9’s main focus on four themes:
1) the intersection of (elderly) care and migration regimes,
2) gender equality as a focus point of nationalistic and nativist political discourse,
3) marriage and parenthood/reproduction related rights, and
4) the right to move for young Europeans.
For this aim the countries represented in this WP (Croatia, Israel, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and in certain cases the United Kingdom) have been selected on basis of two criteria: their welfare regimes (the countries represent the five typical regimes types in the social policy literature; liberal, social-democratic, continental, Mediterranean and Eastern Europe) as well as migration regimes. They vary in: colonial histories, old and new migrant (care) workers, exocentric minority populations and one homogeneous country, and also in strictness of migration policies. As such the selected countries represent the variety of migration regimes at present in Europe.
The work undertaken in WP9 was divided into nine tasks:
Within Task 9.1 WP 9 looked at 27 National Reform Programmes focusing on the transposition of EU directives and guidelines with regard to four themes: care for the elderly, non-national care workers, the reproductive rights of family members, and mobile youth. Within each document, any mention of these themes was coded for analysis and then organized around sub-themes centered on potentially important subjects from a citizenship rights perspective.
The aim of Task 9.2 was to investigate, from a gender and generational perspective, the actual possibilities and impediments that EU mobile citizens experience in their access to social rights. The main results of the task are that selective criteria as means to prevent welfare tourism have been implemented by many countries. Access to these rights mostly depends on meeting requirements or possessing economic resources, which may be indirectly related to gender and generation as long as they are based on the applicants’ employment position. Therefore, because in many countries migrant women are employed in disadvantaged labour market positions, they are at greater risk of encountering practical barriers in meeting the requirements for social rights entitlements..
The aim of Task 9.3 was to analyze the use of European social, civil and economic family-related rights and obligations on basis of the findings of WP 3-8 and to collect the three conclusions resulting from an integrative seminar, which took place in June 2016.
First, a tension emerged between a worker-model/market-EU citizenship and political EU citizenship appeared, partly due to the lower participation of young people and lower-class women in the elections. Second, a tension arose between EU citizenship as an integrated status (as in national citizenship) and EU citizenship as a disaggregated form of citizenship. Third, a tension emerged between citizenship understood as a bundle of rights and citizenship as a social practice, that is between legal and substantial rights. The panel meeting concluded that these three tensions in combination represent the adverse European citizenship rights of women and the young in vulnerable areas of the labour market, such as in the domain of care.
Task 9.4 provides a cross-national pilot study on attitudes of national populations towards social and civil rights for family members in order to understand their evaluation of a) European efforts to converge social, civil and economic rights for family members, and b) European mobility of pensioners, care workers and youth on the move.
The analysis of the data (collected by a questionnaire based pilot study) shows cross-country differences and similarities in attitudes social and civil family related rights. Polarization was evident between more traditional countries (i.e. Italy and Croatia) and less traditional countries (Spain and the Netherlands) in terms of the European 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.
The central aim of task 9.5 was to understand the views of EP parties and social movements on family-related rights and values, in particular the position of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) on three policy issues of free movement of young women, migration and elderly care. The conclusions are the following: there is a tension in the ways in which these issues are framed; the EP level consensus in relation to mobility, elderly care and especially social rights is to some extent built on silences regarding potential implementation challenges due to large member state differences in welfare and migration regimes as well as labour market and care arrangement models. Differences in welfare systems, member state resistance to EU intervention in social policies, and the challenges of portable social security rights as well as debates on welfare tourism and welfare chauvinism are also left largely untouched.
Within task 9.6 WP9 studied 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 explored the extent to which migrant care workers from EU versus non-EU countries (i.e. TCNs) can exercise citizenship rights across the EU15 (Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain), new members (Croatia and Hungary) and non-EU states (Israel). The study shows that 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.
Task 9.7 (Deliverable 9.7) Report of case studies on gender equality as a focus point of national and nativist discourses, has identified similarities and divergences in framing migration, mobility, gender and family and the implications of these frames for European citizenship in 7 European countries plus Israel. The Northern, Southern and Eastern European radical right-wing parties share negative positions to migration and ethnic, religious and national minorities. The analysis also points towards important variations across the geographical divide in relation to internal mobility primarily attached to the economic dimension. In the West the parties perceive their citizens as invaded by migrants from other EU-countries, or in the East as being forced to migrate; both positions blaming the EU policies for the welfare problems their countries experience.
Gender, family and religious issues have moved to the welfare dimension, such as the support for ‘working mothers’, which has become part of a Conservative agenda to secure labour power and boost the national economy. The overall conclusion is that EU-citizenship is more contested than ever and the strengthening of the nativist and exclusive nationalist rightwing parties across Europe and in the EP challenges the EUs founding principles of free mobility of labour/open borders as well as the guiding principles of non-discrimination of nationalities, ethnicity and religion.
Task 9.8 was 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 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. The main conclusion of this article 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.
Finally, Task 9.9 which resulted in the article “Why young Europeans stay at home. Including stay & stay away factors in empirical migration research”, provides insights on motivations of young adults for inter European migration. The main finding is that, contrary to what we expected, the two most important Push and Pull indicators are non-economic but ‘discovering something new and meet new people’ and ‘the political situation abroad is better’. The third most important Push and Pull indicators is indeed an economic one: better job opportunities abroad. In addition, the most important Stay and Stay Away indicator is a non-economic one: ‘my home is here’, and the second most important Stay and Stay Away indicator is an economic one: having a good job in the home country. The third most important Stay and Stay Away indicator is again a non-economic one: not feeling qualified enough to migrate.
The main results carried out within this work package have been collected in the final manuscript “Gender And Generational Division In EU Citizenship”, accepted for publication by Edward Elgar Publishing.
Main results
A major conclusion of the research carried out is that the harmonization of work-related family policies at the EU-level so far only slowly is getting its reflection in family related social and civil citizenship rights. Indeed, there is tendency in an increasing number of Member States towards the recognition of the rights of ‘diverse’ family forms, and some lip service is expressed on the legal rights of domestic care workers. However, family and marriage law, LGBTI and reproductive rights so far are beyond the scope of the EU. Hence, a rather complex composition of EU citizenship rights comes to the fore, existing in more or less harmonized work-related economic and social rights combined with fragmented and dispersed family related social and civil rights. This EU citizenship of two parallel universes – one composed of unified rights and obligations, the other existing in subsets of fragmented rights - first and for all has consequences for Europe’s internal mobility. It both hampers and stimulates inter EU mobility though for rather distinct reasons. Work-related mobility will be sub-optimal if workers’ diverse family rights are not recognized in the Member States that are eager for their skills and capacities. Reproduction related mobility (either for having children or abortion) as well as care work related mobility in contrast are stimulated due to the variety of equal family related rights in the Member States. Variation in family related rights, however, does not only touch upon mobile European citizens, it also relates to reflections on boundary drawing in general; the boundaries between the economic arena, subject of the European policies and politics on the one hand and the private ‘home’ arena subject of the national policies and politics. Both have effects on gender- and intergenerational division lines by way of a double ‘domestification’ of gender- and intergenerational citizenship rights. First, the prioritization of work-related family policy (childcare, equal work-related rights) degrades family law, regulations and policies to a second order priority when it comes to EU citizenship rights. Secondly, the claim of national politicians to regulate their own domestic -national - family arrangements, despite the increasing tendency towards convergence, contributes to identity politics in which the increasing wish for diversity can be overruled by domestic national policy making.
3.10 Work Package “Balancing Citizenship of ‘Insiders’ and ‘Outsiders’” (WP10)
Work undertaken and main results
Work for Work Package 10 started with the mapping of specific citizen and non-citizen rights and obligations with respect to work, care and welfare in Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, the United, in and in Israel (task 10.1).
The study examined the principles that underpin access to state territory (immigration policy); to citizenship (naturalisation policy); and to income-based social benefits (social security policy). By examining these principles with respect to the rights and obligations of national citizens, European (EEA) citizens, and non-European/non-national citizens (TCNs) in the aforementioned countries, the analysis highlights the ways in which processes of inclusion and exclusion of citizens and non-citizens are not limited to a dichotomy of citizenship/non-citizenship, EU/non-EU citizenship. Across these three axes of inclusion and exclusion (mobility, naturalisation and social security), divisions among as well as between national citizens, EU and non-EU/non-national citizens are evident. Hierarchies of deservingness and undeservingness, of belonging and non-belonging, are shaped by ideologies of the nation, work, family and welfare, underpinning the terms and conditions of access to state territory, to citizenship, to state social provisions, which are rooted in the varying historical contexts of the countries included in the analysis. At the same time, those hierarchies have been influenced by the interactions of national and European policies, through which new processes of inclusion and exclusion between and among European and non-European citizens have emerged.
Task 2 was the analysis and report on National datasets on immigration, naturalisation, work, and welfare in selected countries. With the increasing value placed on data collection, and the growth of migration control as a policy topic, this report seeks to explore how migrants are captured in datasets and what this can tell us about the in/exclusion of different groups as explored in report Deliverable 10.1. For this report, WP10 partners explored their national datasets (Ireland, Netherlands, UK, Spain, Croatia and Israel), in the form of national labour force surveys (LFS), administrative and register datasets. We also looked at Eurostat harmonised data sources: the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) as well as the publicly available Eurostat database on migration statistics.
Comparing different states’ datasets it becomes clear that it is necessary to engage with their political history. Identifying a population as a population can stigmatise and risk reducing complex social processes to matters of identity. The politics of visibility are complex and also nationally particular. As this report shows, it is thus important to remember that statistical processes are not necessarily the neutral and benign form of enumeration they can be taken to be (Sussman, 2004), but can contribute to processes of ‘othering’ and normalised ideas of in/exclusion. Data about populations can “render rigid new conceptualizations of the human being” through their categorization (Hacking, 1982 in Sussman, 2004: 102). Processes of labelling can lead to the construct of bureaucratic identities (Zetter, 1991) and Werbner (2000) similarly argues that some ethnic minority categorisation is ‘imagined’ by the state for the control of populations. Thus, one needs to look behind the numbers at the framing of concepts embedded in statistical systems and what the data may be masking.
The third task analysed existing research and data on selected hidden populations and it resulted in the report on Citizenship and Work: Case Studies of Differential Inclusion/Exclusion. This report examined the ways in which the labour of specific groups, or specific types of labour, are excluded from labour markets in the selected states. The aim was to further develop interconnections and ideas of ‘gated citizenship’. Five case study social groups were selected: beggars, asylum seekers and refugees, domestic workers, EU migrant women, and people with disabilities. Each case study was led by a different partner. Partners explored grey/academic literature and available data on these case study groups; some case studies included original empirical work where this was feasible with additional funds.
As the cases referred to in this report highlight, inclusion within the labour market – being a worker – does not confer 'full citizenship', despite the ideal of the citizen as worker. It does not necessarily ensure access to rights of residence, to social security provisions, and employment protections. Nor does it necessarily enable economic independence. And not all economic activities make someone a worker. Nor do the strategies of those excluded from the status of worker, such as begging, in order to achieve an income, make them 'self-sufficient' citizens. Experiences of poverty and relative exclusion, and risk of poverty and exclusion, cut across those in and out of work, while exclusion from access to rights of residence, to social security provisions and employment protections (both those in work and out of work) places particular groups at greater risk of poverty, with implications for long term outcomes over the life course.
It is generally accepted that not being a citizen is a legitimate barrier to accessing the labour market, and that nationals should have priority access to jobs. In D10.1 Work Package 10 demonstrated that not being a worker is also a barrier to citizenship and that this is the case for EU citizenship, but also for national citizens. This deliverable went further and explored how not being the right kind of worker is a barrier to citizenship rights, and that this can be both about the kind of work that is done and the characteristics of the worker. There is a key contradiction between the requirement to be mobile for work and the requirement to ‘belong’ for access to social benefits. While attempts have been made to encourage an ideal of shared membership through EU citizenship, this imagined belonging in practice gives way to an emphasis on belonging as evidenced by stasis, by staying in one place i.e. belonging as being not mobile. The worker citizen must also belong in order to be able to have full access to rights.
Finally, Task 10.4 looked at the typology of the construction of citizen and non-citizen rights and obligations in the selected states. An analysis of deliverables 10.1 10.2 and 10.3 contributed to the policy brief on Mobility and Citizenship in Europe: From the Worker-Citizen to Inclusive European Union Citizenship and it led to the development of three peer-reviewed journal articles.
Policy recommendations for the EU
The crises facing Europe at present bring to the fore an urgent need to promote a more inclusionary model of EU citizenship as central to a renewed convergence within Europe.
While free movement has been a central principle to the development of the EU and EU citizenship over the past, and to facilitating intra-European mobility, the challenges of the present and future require a model which does not rely on the market as the basis for inclusion. A model that promotes solidarity and greater security for those marginalised from the European project. With the development of a European Pillar of Social Rights, there is the potential for a renewed European citizenship that supports access to improved living standards for all people living in Europe, irrespective of their position in the labour market and irrespective of their place of residence.
This could potentially involve the introduction of a ‘European Citizens Income’, providing an unconditional basic level of income to all, without the requirement of work or means-testing. Existing legal bases could be used to develop proposals for this measure. Such a scheme might act to provide direct benefits of European Union citizenship to all, enabling a European Union capacity to provide social protection to citizens across the member states, financed by a European Union-wide tax (e.g. a financial transaction tax, COM(2011) 594 final). More disadvantaged citizens, at greater risk of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion, would potentially experience the benefits of European citizenship in a very direct way without moving, and for some citizens the necessity to move diminishes. Those who do move would be able to do so without exposure to the risks that dependence on the status of worker entails. The interconnections between work and care in people’s lives are recognised and supported through this system, reinforcing the principle of gender equality as central to an inclusive European Union citizenship.
3.11 Work Package “Forward looking activities”
Work undertaken and main results
Work Package 11 focused on connecting research findings to the main challenge underlying the bEUcitizen project: to overcome and remove barriers for the exercise of EU citizenship and to stimulate social change towards an active EU citizenship. The objective of WP11 was therefore to identify and broaden the scope for future policy actions on the level of both the EU and the Member States and within the spheres of academia, law, government and civil society.
The forward-looking activities developed within WP11 are based on the research results of the other WPs and on feedback received from high-level policymakers, opinion leaders in politics, civil society and media.
The work was initiated and carried out along three parallel lines that ensure impact beyond the end date of bEUcitizen.
The first group of tasks (tasks 11.1 and 11.2) focused on developing practical tools for the assessment an forecasting of the impact on citizenship of new (EU and national) legislation and policies and on developing related tools for monitoring.
While the first deliverable explored how an EU citizenship impact assessment framework, or impact assessment tools, can look like and on what these should focus, the second one developed indicators to assess EU citizenship. These indicators are formulated based on existing (impact assessment) guidelines and documents and also on outcomes of the bEUcitizen project. The report shows an overview of the most remarkable topics from the deliverables: the link approach, vulnerable groups, vulnerable countries and regions, variation in national regulation and EU citizenship, and identity and EU community participation. These insights have led towards the following impact assessment indicators to assess EU citizenship:
1. Equality of treatment and opportunities, non-discrimination;
2. Access to and effects on social protection and security, health and education;
3. Security and justice;
4. Employment, labour market and job quality;
5. Freedom of movement;
6. Political participation;
7. Identity and EU community participation;
8. Inclusion and protection of particular groups, countries and/or regions.
Finally, a third deliverable presents in seven practical steps how to carry out an impact assessment for EU citizenship and includes a proposal for revising existing impact assessment documents for the Commission (see Figure 1 below).
<< Figure 1 >>
The second line (task 11.3) dealt with the development of contrasting future scenarios under the heading ‘EU citizenship 2030’ in relation to national citizenship. Representatives from several work packages have been engaged in reflection exercises during the final project phase on establishing scenarios for the medium-term development of EU citizenship practice. Their contribution resulted in a policy paper series which includes seven policy briefs (deliverable 11.4. These policy briefs, which are all available on the bEUcitizen website, identify current dynamics and propose developmental scenarios with specific recommendations for policy-makers
The second outcome of this task is deliverable 11.5 a report outlining four thinkable scenarios for Europe and EU citizenship in 2030, some more utopian and some more dystopian in character. The most significant outcome of the analysis and workshops is that in all scenarios civil society can play a critical role to foster EU citizenship. Therefore, investing in a resilient civil society is regarded to be of high importance to protect, foster and develop EU citizenship.
Lastly, task 11.4 refers to the task on stimulating understanding among young people of citizenship rights and obligations. For this task teaching packages on EU citizenship for secondary school pupils in the age of 14-16/17 have been developed. The teaching packages do not intend to lobby for or create support for EU citizenship, but it intends to make EU citizenship visible in a realistic way; showing concrete relevance not only for ‘movers’ but especially for those who stay at home; and showing how EU citizenship is directly related to one’s daily life and how one can influence these choices.
The themes of the teaching packages are:
1. Getting my rights: Europeanization at home
2. Lobbying and getting in touch with the EU
3. Organizing our interest
4. Travelling around
5. Advising the EU in solving global problems.
All materials will be distributed via the website: http://beucitizen.eu/teaching-packages/
Potential Impact:
4.1 Potential impact and wider societal implications
The following intended impacts were identified from the very beginning for the bEUcitizen project: 1) A boost in academic research on EU citizenship, 2) Policy development, implementation and evaluation to encourage citizenship and remove barriers, and 3) Civil realisation of EU citizenship rights and responsibilities.
Firstly, the contribution bEUcitizen made to the academic community is threefold:
1. Contribution to (conceptual) understanding of (EU) citizenship and the barriers towards EU citizenship:the research findings have been used to develop various narratives on EU citizenship, thereby not only contributing to the current debate on citizenship but also moving beyond the state of the art of citizenship research. The multidisciplinary character of the bEUcitizen project allowed us to study European citizenship in a more innovative way. Case studies accompanied a conceptual analysis of citizenship. This resulted in a more comprehensive understanding of the concept of citizenship in the different research fields, and across different times and spaces.
2. Methodological impact:. by combining the normative and empirical disciplines, bEUcitizen also combined and integrated diverse methodological paradigms, tools and instruments. Taking into consideration that EU citizenship is not only a legal principle but also a social practice as well as a historical process, the methodological challenge of the programme was to raise mutual understanding amongst scholars with different backgrounds and from different disciplines, to share different methodological approach, to implement a truly multidisciplinary approach to the multidimensional character of citizenship, and to sustain substantial coherence to the project
3. Boost research on the interplay of rules and practices: by combining empirical and normative methodologies, the project furthered research on the interplay between rules and practices.
The academic community was and will continuously be reached by means of (scientific) publications (see in particular the bEUcitizen book series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on EU Citizenship) and through networks, platforms and events such as seminars and academic conferences.
Secondly, the bEUcitizen project set out to actively affect policy development, implementation and evaluation to encourage citizenship and remove barriers. To this end, policy makers have been an important focus group for the projects’ dissemination activities, in particular during the last year of the project.
The process of translating the results from the Deliverables into concrete policy recommendations started early 2016 and resulted in the policy paper series ‘EU Citizenship 2030’ composed of 7 policy briefs written by leading researchers in the bEUcitizen project. The policy briefs were published online in January 2017 and distributed at the project final conference (April 2017).
There are two separate yet interrelated themes of the bEUcitizen policy briefs through which they are expected to impact on current debates about EU socio-economic policies and the socio-economic prospects for citizens. One is about addressing social inequalities, the other about increasing legitimacy of EU decision-making. As for the first, the policy brief by Eberl and Seubert argues that social inequalities create a vicious voting cycle where lower classes feel increasingly disappointed and convinced that their vote does not matter. These citizens therefore effectively stay away from ballots) while political elites in return tend to only focus on those who vote, thus, further alienating lower classes with their policies. The policy brief by on social rights by Seeleib-Kaiser focuses on policies in the area of social protection. He advances the idea of a European Minimum Income Scheme within the euro area to tackle social inequalities. In a similar vein, bEUcitizen researchers Anderson, Shutes and Walker propose an EU-level capacity to provide benefits directly to EU and non-EU citizens in order to decrease social inequalities through more convergent national policies. These policy briefs are meant to directly contribute to the debate about future EU and, in particular euro zone reform. The policy brief on civil rights of citizens by Granger stresses the need to use a different approach to the free movement principle which should be dependent upon the levels of solidarity EU member states are open to take upon themselves. Granger holds the creation of an EU-level safety net and the consolidation of the status quo by graduate and selective access to social assistance as the most attractive choices. With respect to economic rights of EU citizens, the policy brief edited by De Vries a.o. stresses the need to socially embed economic rights and to propose new policies to advance the recognition of professional qualifications and to implement the digital single market. Knijn and Oomkens focus specifically on the issue of long-term care, and propose further directives on cash-for-care systems, ‘care leave for kin’, and employment conditions for care workers that could have a serious impact on the sector. Through these proposals bEUcitizen policy briefs make concrete contributions to policy reform and the improvement of socio-economic conditions within the Union. The advancement of proposals for alternative legitimacy devices by bEUcitizen researcher Cheneval are targeted to impact on debates about Treaty change and the adjustment of member states’ own constitutional frameworks. These proposals include plebiscites and direct democracy tools that would require an expansion of democratic mechanisms at the member state level as well.
Furthermore, within WP11 a citizenship impact assessment tool has been developed, which will serve as a practical tool for policy makers to assess consequences of policies for EU citizenship and broaden their perspective on what to include and who to consult.
Existing Commissions impact assessment guidelines do not focus on EU citizenship impact. The focus is on economic, social and environmental impacts. Therefore, in order to make decision makers aware of the risks for new barriers for citizens when exercising their citizenship rights, it is necessary to include EU citizenship. Our proposals contribute to a more comprehensive - and at the same time more practical - impact assessment framework that focus on environmental, economic, social and EU citizenship impacts. The proposals focus on both the European and the national level and include quantitative and deliberative practices. In this way, we guarantee that parallel attention will be paid to the ‘right’ and ‘community’ dimension of EU citizenship within an impact assessment tool, and – as a result – policymakers will get insight in the juridical aspect of EU citizenship as well as the grass root experiences of individual citizens.
In addition, based on the outcomes of the bEUcitizen project and five scenario workshops, Work Package 11 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), which are presented in Deliverable 11.5: Scenarios for EU citizenship in 2030- Repertoires for action in thinkable futures. 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. 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
Finally, in various Member States events have been organized with bEUcitizen participants to discuss the results of our research with policy-makers. Noteworthy is the final bEUcitizen conference, where two lunch meetings specifically addressed to policy makers were organized and that respectively focused on the European Pillar of Social Rights and on the White Paper on the Future of Europe (Five scenarios).
Thirdly, a crucial aspect of the project was to identify ways in which European citizens become aware of and can be encouraged to exercise their rights. To make a lasting impact on the experience and exercise of European citizenship, bEUcitizen realized from the very beginning that it is particularly important to reach young people in Europe, especially those young Europeans who are still in school or who have just started their careers and/or families, and are under the age of thirty-five.
Work Package 11 was specifically designed to target this group of young Europeans and it developed a set of five teaching packages that are available on the bEUcitizen website. Furthermore, several workshops on future scenarios have been organized, of which the two most important are: Breaking Down Barriers: Future scenarios on youth and citizenship in 2030, side event organized in the context of the mid-term and annual Conference on June 29-30 2015, in Zagreb (Croatia); The future of Europe - Exploring strategies for strengthening EU Citizenship, future creating workshop organized as kick-off of the final conference on April 25 2017, Brussels (Belgium).
4.2 Main dissemination activities
A broad array of dissemination channels have been conceived and implemented to boost the visibility of the project and in order to guarantee that the most relevant project outcomes were communicated to the widest audience possible, in the most effective way.
A first dissemination plan (Deliverable 12.1) was submitted in November 2013 and it was further elaborated in the dissemination strategy plan (Deliverable 12.4) submitted in January 2015. The plan was designed to maximize the potential impact of the project through the implementation of targeted dissemination activities for the findings of the project. To this end, three main target groups have been identified:
1. The Academic Community
2. Policy Makers
3. Young Europeans
In order to maximize the potential impact on these target groups, specific dissemination activities and ambitions have been developed for each target group specifically.
Key dissemination tools and activities conducted by the project are described below:
Public Website
The official website of the bEUcitizen project is available at http://beucitizen.eu/
The objective of this website is to disseminate any kind of information project-related to a wide audience in a fast and accessible manner. During the project lifetime, website visitors were informed about the project’s concept, progress and innovative results. All deliverables accepted by the European Commission can be downloaded from the website.
The website was created and updated by Utrecht University (with support of all participants), and will be maintained and hosted by UU after December 2017.
bEUcitizen Blog series
From the beginning of the project a series of blogs has been published on the website. The blogs have been written by a great number of bEUcitizen researchers and members of the Advisory Board and have drawn attention to topical issues on EU citizenship, which are addressed from different disciplines.
Social networks
BEUcitizen made also use of social networks, as Twitter (@bEUcitizen) and Facebook (@bEUcitizen).
Newsletter
The main purpose of the newsletter was to provide up-to-date information to interested parties about the activities performed within the scope of the project, results achieved as well as upcoming events of interests.
A total of 6 newsletters were published during the lifetime of the project, more precisely :
- Newsletter 1, December 2013, which presented the project, the activities performed during the first six months and reported on the kick-off meeting;
- Newsletter 2, July 2014, with a focus on the first research results and on the first annual meeting in Istanbul from June 30th to July 2nd 2014;
- Newsletter 3, December 2014, gave visibility to the achievement of three important deliverables (D3.1 D7.1 and D9.1). Furthermore, the newsletter served as means of distribution of the Call for papers for the 2015 Mid - Term Conference, entitled: Being a Citizen in Europe (Zagreb, 2015);
- Newsletter 4, August 2015 reflected on the "Being a citizen in Europe" Conference held in Zagreb (29-30 June 2015), reported on the parallel workshop organized for students “Breaking Down Barriers: Future scenarios on youth and citizenship in 2030 – Youth and access to education, labor and political decision making” and on the Circus Europe Art Exhibition;
- Newsletter 5, January 2016, which presented the latest deliverables published and the most important results achieved so far; and
- Newsletter 6, February 2017, which contained an overview on the six Policy Briefs released by bEUcitizen Consortium members and presented the bEUcitizen Final Conference.
- Newsletter 7, June 2017, with a reflection on the project by Prof Sybe de Vries, the report of the final conference and some final updates.
In addition, the newsletter was also used to circulate the Call for Papers for the two-day international and interdisciplinary conference “Being a Citizen in Europe”, which took place on 29 - 30 June 2015 in Zagreb (Croatia).
Corporate identity
An integral part of our dissemination strategy was our corporate identity. All communication from and within the project had the same, uniform lay-out, use of logo’s and colours. The logos developed for the project reflect the many aspects which reflect the many ‘multiples’ of our project:
<< Figure 2>>
Policy briefs
As stated above, seven policy briefs have been published with a view to communicate policy relevant results and to attract the highest attention from policymakers.
The bEUcitizen project as a whole aimed to provide a comparative overview and classification of the various barriers to the exercise of rights and obligations of European Union citizens in the member states. Simultaneously the project analysed whether and how such barriers can be overcome and the future opportunities and challenges the European Union and its member states face to further develop the idea and reality of European Union citizenship.
This series of bEUcitizen policy briefs is particularly oriented towards this latter dimension and engages with key issues for the future development of EU citizenship. Leading researchers from the bEUcitizen project built on the results of bEUcitizen research in outlining scenarios of future developments of EU citizenship and in presenting concrete proposals for policy action. The policy briefs have a strong orientation towards the nearby future, the coming 10 to 20 years and present in most cases alternative scenarios. All policy briefs have been published on the bEUcitizen website, under “Publications”. Furthermore, they were circulated within our mailing list with Newsletter n.6 February 2017, and they have been printed and distributed at the final conference (26-28 April 2017, Brussels).
Conferences and Workshops
The most important channel for engaging with the Academic Community and Policy Makers was the organisation of high-level conferences and events. .
If during the first years the main aim of these presentations was to introduce bEUcitizen to the Academic Community, in the last year, when results were available, conferences and seminars would become the main platform to discuss findings, to collect suggestions and to exchange knowledge with other scholars and professionals. Furthermore, conferences and national events proved to create important opportunities for involving local policy makers and civil society organizations.
Setting up an efficient structure for the dissemination activities that involve all consortium partners was one of the main goal. Part of this structure is that all partners in the consortium organized local dissemination events in their home countries, and, when possible, in their own language.
Participation to external events
The bEUcitizen community participated in many external events related to the topic of the projects. They were a precious opportunity to further spread the research outcomes and interact with different stakeholders.
From the very beginning, all our researchers have been asked to keep track of the activities undertaken that represented a mean to circulate our project and to create awareness about it.
Teaching packages
Work package 11 developed 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. 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.
Other dissemination tools:
We realized that short videos and visual art are also powerful tools to communicate academic results to the wider public. Therefore, alongside our academic activities, we cooperated with visual artists and poets, visualizing the theme of European citizenship
- Videos: a video series was developed by our project, which consists of 5 short videos that address the challenges the EU and its citizens are facing. Each documentary uses a simplified language and approach in order to be understandable for a wider audience. The main characteristic of the produced video are of simplicity, clarity and entertainment. The videos are publicly available on our website as well as through our social media channels (twitter, facebook, linkedIn and youtube). More information are provided below.
- Circus Europe: Circus Europe is a project by visual artist Machteld van Buren and poet Peter van Lier. In the large collection of collages “Circus Europe”, Machteld illustrates how the struggle for survival is being waged in various European countries. Some countries are depicted as an animal: the body consists of a map onto which the realistic head of an animal has been superimposed. Other countries are the playground for animals, performing acts that are indicative of how each nation functions. More information on Circus Europe can be found here: http://circus-europe-exhibitions.blogspot.nl/
We hosted two expositions of the Circus Europe art project: the first one at the Zagreb Conference of bEUcitizen at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb, from 29 June till 2 July 2015 and the second one at the bEUcitizen final conference hosted at the Residence Palace, Brusself, from 26 to 28 April 2017
The complete list of dissemination activities (organization of and participation to conferences, seminars, workshops and other events; interviews; presentations; online presence, etc.) and publications is provided separately in the appendix of this document. It was reported in more detail in the project’s periodic progress report and in Deliverable 12.5.
4.3 Exploitation of results
Publications in academic journals
Some of the findings of the bEUcitizen research has been submitted for publication or published in peer-reviewed academic journals; this will ensure maximum impact from the scientific work that was carried out. Journals targeted for paper publications included the ones in which our researchers have previously been published, like Social Politics, Journal of Social Policy, Constellations, Nordic Journal of International Law, European Intellectual Property Review, International Public Administration review, European Labour Law Journal, to mention just a few.
Book series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on EU Citizenship
The results deriving from the work undertaken in the different Work packages have been collected in the bEUcitizen book series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on EU Citizenship, which will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in Spring 2018 (see announcement below, Figure 3).
The series looks into the main issues relating to EU citizenship, and citizenship in general, from different angles and from a multi-disciplinary approach. It approaches and analyses the concept of EU citizenship in a coherent and integrative manner, yet from a set of unique and distinct perspectives. The point of departure is that citizenship is not merely a legal notion of rights produced by statute and/or case law, but something that has developed and develops in the interchange between rules and practices, between law, politics and society. So studying citizenship issues requires an interdisciplinary approach, which is offered by the bEUcitizen interdisciplinary team of contributors to the series from various relevant disciplines including: law, philosophy, history, sociology, political science, economics and policy studies. This important series addresses both the normative and empirical dimensions of citizenship, and will further stir the debate on citizenship questions in Europe and beyond.
The audience for the book series is varied. The book series will appeal first of all to academics and students in quite a variety of academic disciplines. The latter are organized in relative large academic associations, in which many members of our research team actively participate, in some cases also in their leadership. Hence the book series will be promoted through their communication channels: conferences, email-networks, websites, etc.
Furthermore, given the fact that ‘citizenship right issues’ figure prominently on the EU-policymaking agenda, the book series addresses practitioners and policymakers in European institutions as well as in the national political, administrative and policy advisory institutions in the different EU Member States, and especially their aides, commercial policy advisors, and the numerous lawyers and lobbyist organizations in Brussels.
Finally, the books might be used in academic courses on a variety of topics related to citizenship and in quite a variety of academic disciplines: law, history, geography, philosophy, political science, social policy, sociology, socio-legal studies or economics.
<< Figure 3 >>
EU citizenship teaching packages for secondary school pupils
Within Work package 11 we developed 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:
1. Getting my rights: Europeanization at home
2. Lobbying and getting in touch with the EU
3. Organizing our interest
4. Travelling around
5. Advising the EU in solving Global Problems
The overall goal of these teaching packages is to teach secondary school pupils about EU citizenship. With these teaching packages we pursue three concrete goals. We want the pupils:
a) to discover what rights they have as EU citizens, both during their daily life at home, and when traveling around;
b) to develop the necessary competencies to get access to, realise and/or enforce their rights;
c) to develop the civic and political competencies to participate in the variety of political communities on different levels they belong to in order to make their voices heard in decision-making on all levels.
The teaching packages are available on the bEUcitizen website (http://beucitizen.eu/) and will be further distributed via Europa Teachers' Corner webpage (see flyer below, Figure 4.)
<< Figure 4 >>
Videos
Together with Beatrice Ngula Kabutakapua we developed a series of 5 short videos that address the challenges the EU and its citizens are facing, with the aim to not only make our research more accessible for the (Young) European citizen, but also to help policymakers in understanding the different tensions and barriers that are still persistent in the European citizenship.
Each film seeks to explain the rights of EU citizens and the persistent barriers towards European citizenship in a simple language with a view to attract a wider audience and the public at large. The videos are thus distinctive in their simplicity, clarity and entertainment. The videos are available on the bEUcitizen website
Maintaining the network
The bEUcitizen consortium will continue to disseminate its outcomes beyond the project duration, by attending academic events (several participants will participate in the ECIT Summer University – “Countering threats to European citizenship across borders, reconfiguring its future” which will take place from 30 August 2017 to 1 September 2017 in Brussels), publishing in academic journals and by organizing events at local level.
The activities organised by the project and the outcomes obtained have led to new ideas for research proposals and plans to better integrate existing projects.
Following the collaboration on the bEUcitizen project, Utrecht University, Central European University and Oxford University are already collaborating in the H2020 project ETHOS, ‘Towards a European Theory of Justice and Fairness’, coordinated by Utrecht University. In addition, Oxford University and London School of Economics are partnering on an application to ESRC on citizenship post Brexit. Furthermore, Utrecht University, Goethe University of Frankfurt and University College Dublin are partners in a Horizon2020 application on the Rule of Law, Democracy and Sovereignty.
Finally, the core group of the bEUcitizen consortium is looking into possibilities to build upon the existing network and to establish an interdisciplinary research network in the field of EU citizenship.
List of Websites:
Website
The bEUcitizen website can be found at the following link: http://beucitizen.eu/
Coordination
The project is coordinated by Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
Coordinator:
Prof. Dr. Sybe de Vries
Utrecht University | Achter Sint Pieter 200 | 3512 HT | Utrecht | Tel: + 31(0)30 253 7271 or + 31(0)30 253 7047 | Email: S.A.deVries@uu.nl
Co-coordinator:
Prof. Dr. Frans van Waarden
Utrecht University | Email: f.vanwaarden@uu.nl
Project logo:
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Contact Names Per Work Package:
WP2: Sandra SEUBERT, Prof. Dr.,
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M | Email : seubert@soz.uni-frankfurt.de
Prof. Dr. Frans van Waarden
Utrecht university | Email: f.vanwaarden@uu.nl
WP3 : Patrick WALLIS, Prof. Dr.
London School of Economics | Email : p.h.wallis@lse.ac.uk
Maarten PRAK, Prof. Dr.
Utrecht University | Email: m.prak@uu.nl
WP4: Francis CHENEVAL, Prof. Dr.
Universität Zürich | Email: francis.cheneval@philos.uzh.ch
Prof. Dr. Frans van Waarden
Utrecht university | Email: f.vanwaarden@uu.nl
WP5: Elena IORIATTI, Prof. Dr.
University of Trento | Email: elena.ioriatti@unitn.it
Prof. Dr. Sybe de Vries
Utrecht University | Email: S.A.deVries@uu.nl
WP6: Martin SEELEIB-KAISER, Prof. Dr.
University of Oxford | Email: martin.seeleib@spi.ox.ac.uk
Frans PENNINGS, Prof. Dr.
Utrecht University | Email: f.pennings@uu.nl
WP7: Marie-Pierre GRANGER, Prof. Dr.
Central European University | grangerm@ceu.edu
Prof. Dr. Sybe de Vries
Utrecht University | Email: S.A.deVries@uu.nl
WP8: David LEVI-FAUR, Prof. Dr.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Email: levifaur@mscc.huji.ac.il
Prof. Dr. Frans van Waarden
Utrecht university | Email: f.vanwaarden@uu.nl
WP9: Manuela NALDINI, Prof. Dr.
University of Turin | Email: manuela.naldini@unito.it
Trudie KNIJN, Prof. Dr.
Utrecht university | Email: G.C.M.Knijn@uu.nl
WP10: Bridget ANDERSON, Prof. Dr.
University of Oxford | Email: bridget.anderson@compas.ox.ac.uk
Isabel Shutes, Dr.
London School of Economics | Email: i.h.shutes@lse.ac.uk
WP11: Uwe PUETTER, Prof. Dr.
Central European University | Email: puetteru@ceu.edu
Wieger BAKKER, Prof. dr.
Utrecht University | Email: w.e.bakker@uu.nl
The objectives of the FP7 funded project entitled bEUcitizen – All rights reserved? Barriers towards European citizenship – were to provide a comparative overview and classification of the various barriers to the exercise of the rights and obligations of EU citizens in the Member States and some candidate countries, to analyse whether and how such barriers can be overcome and to explore the future opportunities and challenges the EU and its Member States face to further develop the idea and reality of EU citizenship.
In our project citizenship is not perceived as a merely legal or constitutional category. Instead, citizenship is studied in its interdependence between rules and practices, or between law and society. Legal rights are the outcome of societal and political processes, and, in turn, subsequently structure and influence them. Furthermore, citizenship is a heterogeneous concept, characterized by multi-layeredness and multi-dimensionality, which affects various categories of citizens differently.
With a view to address the dynamics between legal rules and societal practices, the differentiation of citizenship rights across domains and categories of citizens, and the existence and effects of multiple barriers to the exercise of citizenship rights, we have brought together a multidisciplinary team from 26 universities and institutes situated in 19 countries across the EU and outside to combine their expertise. As citizenship has both normative and empirical dimensions this team includes both representatives from normative disciplines, such as law and philosophy, and empirical sciences, such as sociology, political science, history, economics and policy studies. Furthermore, the team is supported by an advisory board of high-level experts, who are internationally recognised and eminent for their academic achievements and/or societal status. They have played an increasingly active role in critically following, discussing and advising on the findings of the project and in assisting the executive board of the bEUcitizen consortium.
After an initial phase, which focused on coordination of the research and the setting up of methodologies, substantial progress was made on the research tasks and the deliverables during the second phase. In the last stage of the project we concentrated on the integration of the research findings from the different Work Packages, on creating more synergy between deliverables and on elaborating a coherent ‘narrative’ of European citizenship. We also focused on disseminating our main results among decision makers, academic community and general public. Key-findings have been translated into a series of seven policy briefs, where we also develop a set of alternative scenarios for the future of EU citizenship, with the aim to provide input for policy formulation, development and implementation. Within Work Package 11 we developed a citizenship impact assessment tool, which will serve as a practical tool for policy makers to assess consequences of policies for EU citizenship and broaden their perspective on what to include and who to consult. With the aim to establish a better understanding and awareness among young people of citizenship rights and obligations and of ways in which European citizenship can be exercised, we developed a series of five teaching packages for secondary school pupils in the age of 14-16/17.
Finally, the results deriving from the work undertaken in the different Work packages have been collected in the bEUcitizen book series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on EU Citizenship, which will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in Spring 2018.
Project Context and Objectives:
2.1 Project context
People living in Europe belong to different concentric or overlapping communities: neighbourhoods, cities, nation states and the European Union. They can also belong to various other groups or categories: (extended) families, genders, age groups, ethnic groups, the employed or the unemployed, students or pensioners, the healthy, the sick or the disabled as well as language or religious communities. These communities and categories define – multiple – identities, which engender rights, duties and responsibilities. Over time some of these have come to be defined in law.
Membership of territorially defined communities is called citizenship. This term – as well as related ones in other European languages (citoyenneté, burgerschap, Bürgerschaft, ciudadanía, cittadinanza, cidadania, cetatenie, medborgarskap) – stems from the term ‘city’, ‘burg’, fortress i.e. a walled and protected territory. Inhabitants of this walled territory had freedom, which furthered independence and individualism. However, not everybody within the city wall was a “citizen”. Citizenship has and had next to the territorial definition always also a social construction of membership which included and excluded some groups. The beggar within the city wall was not part of the citizens, to give an example of exclusion. For those who were included, the right to freedom and independence was always combined with duties and responsibilities. Walls provided protection, but had to be built, maintained, and defended. Duties such as serving in civic militias, guarding walls and dykes, providing labour, and paying taxes were required in order to guarantee the continued protection of these rights. Such rights and duties stabilised mutual expectations between people and developed into customs. Eventually they became enacted in law, in order to increase transparency and predictability and ensure equality.
The bEUcitizen project, which responded to the FP7 SSH Call 2012 Activity 5 Challenge: Exercise EU citizenship: removing barriers, sought to study European citizenship from a set of distinctive perspectives. Citizenship in this research project is understood not only as a merely legal or constitutional category, but was studied in its interdependence between rules and practices or between law and society. Legal rights are the outcome of societal and political processes, and, in turn, subsequently structure and influence them.
To address the dynamics between legal rules and societal practices, the differentiation of citizenship rights across domains and categories of citizens, and the existence and effects of multiple barriers to the exercise of citizenship rights, the bEUcitizen project has brought together a multi-disciplinary team from all over Europe to combine their expertise. As citizenship has both normative and empirical dimensions - another expression of its multi-dimensional character - this team included both representatives from normative disciplines such as law and philosophy, and from empirical sciences, such as sociology, political science, history, economics and policy studies.
Another characteristic of the bEUcitizen research project was its unique approach. Rather than studying citizenship as a homogeneous concept, our project acknowledged its heterogeneous character, in several respects.
Firstly, citizenship is conceived as a multi-Layered concept.
In Europe, concepts of local, national and EU citizenship exist side by side. It is a multi-layered phenomenon. This is neither new nor unique. Before the codification of the concept of citizenship after the French revolution, the co-existence of local, regional and national concepts of citizenship was the norm rather than the exception. Federal states display such features to some extent even today. For example, in Switzerland people are still in the first place a citizen of their canton and
only secondly of the federation. They derive different rights from these identities or lack of them. Thus lawyers who have done their lawyer’s exam in one canton until recently could not practice in other cantons. Studying such historical and contemporary models of federal states helped us to identify workable solutions to some of the challenges currently faced by the EU in its attempts to further develop a European form of citizenship.
Secondly, we also acknowledged that citizenship is heterogeneous in terms of the domains it applies to.
Characteristically, citizenship impacts a whole range of fields, starting with politics and the law, but
extending to economic, social and ultimately also cultural rights. As our project showed, citizenship can develop at a different pace in the various domains and this can create rivalries, tensions and complementarities Citizenship rights and duties pertain to the various roles people have and concern different domains of society. Several dimensions of citizenship can therefore be distinguished.
A classic and familiar distinction is that between negative and positive rights. This is linked to the distinction between ‘freedom from’ and the ‘freedom to’ (Fromm 1942, Berlin, 1959). Negative rights are for example ‘freedom from’ something, usually constraints on freedom e.g. from terror, want, insecurity, the burden of corruption. Positive rights refer to the ‘freedom to’: marry, speak freely, vote, undertake, engage in contracts, invest, sell one’s labour, etc. Often, of course, positive freedoms can be redefined into negative ones. This is also the case with the European Union’s four freedoms. The freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and labour can be rephrased as a freedom from constraints on these movements. This is why this often isn’t such a useful classification.
Another classic distinction is that defined by T.H. Marshall (1950) between civil, political and social rights. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights uses this typology, but has added the category of economic rights (which for Marshall were included in the social rights). That is understandable, considering that the European Union started out as an Economic Community, and used to be the main pillar of the three pillars when they were still distinguished. The four EU freedoms refer to economic mobility within and across the borders of Member States: to the traded input and output of economic enterprise: goods, services and to the factors of production: capital and labour.
The EU has put the emphasis on economic rights in particular. Not only has it included them in a separate category in the Charter; it also actively protects them - as with competition policy – or actively encourages consumers to claim them.
Sometimes these categories overlap. For instance, the freedom of movement of labour is also a civil right that allows citizens to stay and seek work in another Member State. The right to medical care in another Member State can be seen as a social (role of patient) as well as an economic (role of consumer) right.
Citizenship not only entails rights, but also duties and obligations. The right to privacy is counterbalanced by the duty to respect the privacy of others, the right to protection against fraud by the obligation not to cheat others, the right to political representation by the duty to pay (taxes) and obey the law, the right to social benefits by the duty to contribute and to give something to society in return.
Thirdly, citizenship rights and duties affect various categories of citizens differently.
Females and males, youngsters and the elderly, insiders (e.g. EU nationals) and outsiders (e.g. third country nationals) are affected differently by the rules and regulations pertaining to citizenship. An additional, useful distinction was therefore made between categories of subjects entitled to rights, often, but not exclusively, on the basis of ascribed status i.e. personal characteristics that are usually not chosen and/or difficult to change (unlike societal roles) such as: gender, race, place of birth, original nationality, very young or very old age, mother tongue, sexual orientation, religion or the lack thereof, disability and acquired level of education. People from different categories and in different roles may have different requirements as to rights pertaining to access to various items such as access to: territory/public space, survival, safety and security, family life, healthcare, food, water, employment, income, education, information, respect, privacy, nondiscrimination, the practice of religion, be understood in their own language, etc.
It stays a paradox of citizenship that though it aimed at abandoning inequality, it created a new one. It made a distinction between citizens with rights and non-citizens without them. Furthermore, there is a difference between law and practice, between having formal rights and having the opportunity to exercise them in practice. The capacity to access such rights is likely to depend on the social and/or the economic position of individuals in society. Thus classic socio-economic distinctions based on ascribed statuses such as gender, race, age or health, or achieved statuses based on education level, mastery of the dominant language, position on the labour market or prosperity are likely to affect the importance of, and access to, specific citizenship rights. These social and economic characteristics can, on the one hand, create specific barriers to the exercise of these rights. Conversely, in order to correct for inequalities stemming from such different social and economic positions, societies may have created specific rights for these categories. Affirmative action is a common example i.e. socio-economic position affects the translation of rules into practices - the ease of exercising formally given rights - and may raise specific barriers to the exercising of these rights. Conversely this socio-economic position may also have produced privileged access in order to compensate for disadvantages.
Fourthly, these different categories of citizens may experience multiple barriers to the exercise of citizenship rights, whereby we again made a distinction between legal barriers, such as contradictions and rankings between different kinds of rights, and societal barriers, such as differences in political, administrative, legal and social institutions, financial constraints administrative or bureaucratic hurdles, linguistic barriers and a lack of solidarity across countries.
2.2 Objectives
The bEUcitizen project set out to identify, investigate, discuss, and ameliorate the barriers to the active use of rights (and knowledge of duties, the concomitant to rights, in so far as there are any) by European citizens. The project aimed to provide a comparative overview and classification of the various barriers to the exercise of the rights and obligations of European Union citizens in the member states. Simultaneously, the project analysed whether and how such barriers can be overcome and the future opportunities and challenges the European Union and its member states face to further develop the idea and reality of European Union citizenship.
By deconstructing citizenship as such, by concentrating on the interactions between rules and practices and through a combination of historical and comparative methodologies, the bEUcitizen project aimed to develop a set of alternative scenarios for the future of EU citizenship.
Furthermore, the main objective of the project was to provide input for policy formulation, development and implementation, and - more broadly – to raise awareness among citizens of their rights and obligations in the Member States and their exercising of these rights whether they live inside or outside the EU. Relevant academic communities, stakeholders and practitioners have been involved throughout the project life-cycle for the purpose of integrating their insights into the empirical as well as theoretical inquiry.
The bEUcitizen project has sought to make an impact on several different levels:
1. Academic impact: by means of annual academic conferences with consortium members and external academics and of publications in academic journals and presentations at seminars and conferences, the projects provided cross-national scientific knowledge about how to further enhance and expand EU citizenship, thereby building on past and on-going EU-level research; by focusing on the interplay between rules and practices, it boosted academic research on EU citizenship;
2. Impact policymakers: through the organization of meetings with experts, members of the Consortium and of the Advisory Board, stakeholders and policy advisers, recommendations were developed to support the awareness and exercising of citizens’ rights in Europe and to remove barriers. Case studies of the various citizenship domains and for various categories of citizens, such as insiders, outsiders, the young, old, men and women provided the necessary input. Furthermore, experiences from the past and from other multi-ethnic and (con)federal states were used to develop future models of the European Union, in which all citizens, including the young, can participate.
3. Impact for citizens: one of the main, if not the principal, aspect of the project has been to identify ways in which citizens become aware of and can be encouraged to exercise their rights. To this end, a broad array of channels have been implemented to reach the widest audience possible (not only old and new social media, but we also developed a set of teaching packages for secondary school pupils, a set of five videos and we collaborated with visual artists);
4. methodological impact: by combining the normative and empirical disciplines, bEUcitizen also combined and integrated diverse methodological paradigms, tools and instruments. Taking into consideration that EU citizenship is not only a legal principle but also a social practice as well as a historical process, the methodological challenge of the programme was to raise mutual understanding among scholars with different backgrounds and from different disciplines, to share different methodological approach, to implement a truly multidisciplinary approach to the multidimensional character of citizenship, and to sustain substantial coherence to the project.
Project Results:
3.1 Overview
The bEUcitizen project was divided into 12 Work Packages: one managerial (WP1), whose main objective was to administer the entire project and coordinate the on-going work among all partners and with the European Commission services; one for disseminating information about the project, its objectives and results and for promoting the use of its foreground (WP12); ten scientific work packages divided into four clusters.
The key findings of the bEUcitizen research project can be summarized as follow:
• We need to look beyond a ‘one-size-fits-all’ EU citizenship. Local, urban and regional citizenship are useful models and can be combined with national and EU citizenship to offer a more embedded and responsive set of rights and duties.
• The social rights of EU citizens vary significantly as a result of different welfare systems in Member States. The social rights of EU migrant citizens are largely determined by the respective countries of origin and destination. The introduction of a European Minimum Income Scheme could be an effective policy to address some of the shortcomings of the system.
• The civil rights of EU citizens are protected by a confusing framework – but it leaves non-mobile citizens, LGBTI and third-country citizens with very little protection under EU law. Fundamental rights should be placed at the core of EU citizenship: this will require a radical overhaul of the EU Treaty.
• The political rights of EU citizens are underdeveloped and should be strengthened. We need more forms of direct democracy – such as referenda (under certain circumstances) - and greater powers for the European Parliament.
• While the economic rights of EU citizens are relatively well-developed, a greater focus on the Digital Single Market could further boost access to economic rights and overcome problems related to mobility. But for economic rights to be sustainable, they need to be socially embedded and balanced with other citizenship rights.
• Different categories of EU citizens have different access to EU rights. The EU must focus on how to manage the fallout of growing social, economic and political polarisation and the increasing numbers of poor people. There must be more emphasis on providing greater security for ‘outsiders’ and the ‘marginalised’, irrespective of their place of residence or their position in the labour market.
• Migrant care workers (usually women) are in a particularly vulnerable position in the EU. New laws need to be adopted which address funding issues for child care, and care of the elderly and disabled people.
• Multilingualism is of crucial importance, but may lead to substantial barriers to citizenship rights. The EU should therefore foster a general languages policy that balances linguistic diversity with European integration.
• The future of European citizenship is closely connected to the future of democracy in Europe. For many years, European integration was deemed a success story: member states pooled many decision-making powers and yet retained their essential sovereignty; and EU member states have not been at war with one another for more than seventy years. Political bargaining and a European legal framework replaced violent conflict to solve disputes. And the creation of the Common Market fostered economic growth. But by the time we were hit with the Euro crisis nearly ten years ago, this narrative had lost its legitimacy. Citizens now perceive European piecemeal integration as undemocratic. Many citizens feel rules are now imposed on them by an external agent – with ‘Brussels’ depicted as the demon. If EU citizenship is to win back its legitimacy, there must now be broader public discussion on and greater political imagination around how to insert more democracy back into the system.
3.2 Work Package ‘Conceptual & Synthesis’ (WP2)
Work undertaken and main results
The first task and aim of WP2 was to further elaborate the project design and to provide substantive coherence and integration of the project by ‘building bridges’ between theoretical and empirical work; between the fields of literature in the disciplines involved in our citizenship debate (law, philosophy, social and political science and history) and between the work done in the various work packages. It resulted in two research working papers: Deliverable 2.1 and Deliverable 2.2 (see also below). These working papers were first of all for internal use, to inspire and direct the work of the participants in the concrete tasks in the various work packages. With regard to this task, the 2016 Annual Conference in Oviedo was pivotal in bringing together the knowledge from the different Work Packages and in re-interpreting the major research questions of the project in light of the current results. Moreover, the cross-cutting themes that are the basis for Deliverable 2.3 were also elaborated further, substantially and conceptually.
At the same time, this Work Package was meant to synthesize the project findings (task 2.2).
The aim of this synthesis was first of all to provide general and comprehensive but also well-elaborated answers to the main research questions of the whole project. This resulted in the first volume of the bEUcitizen book series (the so called “Vertical Book”): “Moving beyond barriers: prospects for EU citizenship?” (Deliverable 2.4) which identifies, analyses and compares a variety of possible ‘barriers’ to the exercise of European citizenship and discusses ways to move beyond these barriers. The plan for the book follows the outline of the bEUcitizen research program in which a conceptual analysis has been followed by research according to a matrix of themes: the respective rights (economic, social, political and civil) in combination with a focus on categories of citizens (gender and generations, insiders and outsiders). Each of these rights and categories are substantiated by in-depth research on policies and practices of social, legal and political institutional settings and its effects for citizens’ rights, formal, informal and substantial. The authors of the respective chapters are the coordinators of each of the ‘work packages’ that made up the research program. The book therefore presents the summarized results of this four year project.
Secondly, the project results were synthesized around a number of topics, which are central in past and current citizenship debates and that are very relevant to the bEUcitizen project. Each topic is the subject of a chapter of the final concluding volume titled “Reconsidering EU citizenship: contradictions and constraints” (the “Horizontal Book” or Deliverable 2.3). The plan for the book first started from its internal use in the huge and pluralistic bEUcitizen-consortium: various participants have identified, described and elaborated a number of crosscutting topics concerning EU-citizenship, which have been subject of academic scholarship and debates and which also ran through the research of our ‘work packages’ and various disciplines. These topics were developed as an internal publication in the first year of the project (Deliverable D 2.1.) which was meant to deliver input to all project participants so that they may be sensitive to finding – facts, legislation, case law, events, developments, tensions and conflicts – that might be relevant for these debates. In the final period of the project the authors of the topic-chapters have gathered input from the various ‘work packages’ and publications to enrich their first theoretical drafts regarding specific topics. They have elaborate their final drafts into chapters of this book in which the relevance of our project findings for these topics of existing and recent ‘scholarship’ are presented.
3.3 Work Package “Historical Development of Citizenship” (WP3)
Work Undertaken
WP3 was divided into 7 tasks examining pre-modern citizenship and its European pathways.
Beginning with Task 3.1 the scale and operation of urban citizenship before 1800 was evaluated. The task was the collection of data on numbers of masters and apprentices relative to total population and size of the trade. Drawing on evidence collected for over 30 European cities between 1550 and 1800, deliverable 3.1 showed that in general about half of urban households were headed by a citizen, with some cities reaching rates of 75 percent. Citizenship was more broadly held in historic Europe than has been appreciated; in the 19th century, access to such citizenship rights as voting was often lower than the rates observed in cities in the 17th century. It was only in the 20th century that citizenship rates exceeded pre-modern levels.
Task 3.2 was the collection of data on formal and informal barriers to citizenship and trades. Data was successfully collected from an extensive sample of towns and cities (n=61) that contained a wide range of guilds (n=321) in France, the Low Countries, England, and German Europe. In deliverable 3.2 WP3 shows that barriers to citizenship based on personal traits, particularly gender, but also religion and place of origin had an exclusionary character, and entry fees were also generally biased to favor insiders, such as local children. However, for the most part, guild and city formal barriers were low enough that they could be comfortably overcome by men with skills, resources or persistence, which is consistent with the results of D3.1. Barriers existed but they were more permeable than has been recognized.
Task 3.3 focused on the collection of data on the social and geographical backgrounds of citizens and aspirant citizens. Using this, in deliverables 3.3 and 3.8 WP3 compared the exclusivity of guilds and citizenship regimes across several European cities, measured by the share of new entrants possessing father-son ties or local geographical connections. This paper looked at the outcomes of citizen barriers measured in 3.2. No consistent evidence of exclusion was found. A large share of premodern citizenship and guild regimes were in fact quite ‘open’ to outsiders. The great majority of cities and guilds allowed in-migration on a large scale. They were not fortresses, but rather island nations, with a heavy flow of movement between them. The impact of barriers to citizenship in limiting economic rights was relatively modest in early modern Europe.
In Task 3.4 the project turned to the relationship between citizenship and human capital. The task concerned the collection of data on early exits from apprenticeship, across a range of locations in France, England and the Northern Netherland. Analyzed in deliverable 3.4. it was found that although Europe’s youths invested substantial amounts of time and money in obtaining skills through apprenticeship, they were not tightly locked into the contracts that they agreed to. Early exits were commonplace across quite different guild/citizenship regimes. Guilds and cities supported flexible training systems. This is the first comparative analysis of this phenomenon and suggests strongly that apprenticeship thrived as a mechanism to generate human capital because it allowed for agreements to be renegotiated and abandoned.
Task 3.5 centered on the collection of data on formal and informal characteristics of apprenticeship contracts, providing the first comparative study of contractual forms for premodern servitude across the continent (synthesized into deliverable 3.5). Across much of Europe, contracts between masters and youths were similar, private agreements. Differences reflected variations in labour markets. City authorities underpinned contractual performance. There is no evidence that different trajectories in citizenship norms produced significant variation in training across the continent.
Finally, Task 3.6 looked at the transition from premodern to national citizenship. It focused on the collection of data on regulatory mechanisms replacing the guilds after they were abolished, addressing a 19th-century institutional ‘gap’ about which little is known. Several recent analyses have sought to explain differences in citizenship between Western countries, particularly the strength of corporatist systems, through differences in the persistence of guild traditions. In deliverable 3.6 WP3 produced a detailed sectoral analysis of regulatory developments in industries in Germany, the Netherlands and England - three points across the spectrum of European political economy. The paper showed that a simple connection between durable guilds and modern corporatism (often associated with Germany, for example) is not a satisfactory explanation for the later shape of citizenship structures. In several cases ‘old’ and ‘new’ regulatory mechanisms were, if not reconciled, at least combined. While guild legacies do matter, their impact on modern political economy depended heavily on the patterns of economic development and approach taken by political elites in each country.
Task 3.7 is the synthesis of the results, which has taken several forms. Two workshops in Oxford and Utrecht have generated two – rather than the planned single – edited volumes. In addition, chapters synthesizing the project’s results will appear in the two project books.
Main results
Looking from a historical perspective, the open and extensive pattern of pre-modern European citizenship is particularly striking, as is the persistence of variation across the nineteenth century. Citizenship may look superficially the same in Europe. But the socio-economic dimensions of citizenship developed along different trajectories, even when countries were experiencing similar transformations in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The main results and recommendations of WP3 can be summarized as follow:
1. Europe has a long tradition of local citizenship arrangements with a good track record in terms of accessibility and performance.
2. Europe has never had a unified citizenship model that applies in all EU countries.
National citizenship contained marked and persistent variations between countries.
Modern citizenship is the product of a revolution (1789) and decades of contestation in its wake. Local citizenship was not simply abolished. Elements were accommodated and persisted within national citizenship. If the EU aims to introduce its own citizenship model, it should expect a protracted struggle, because of interests currently vested in other forms of citizenship, and should not anticipate cleanly replacing existing arrangements.
WP3’s first result suggests that an alternative strategy can work successfully. Local forms of citizenship do not inevitably generate closed, selfish communities. Premodern Europe offers a model of ‘layered’ or ‘nested’ citizenship. Applied today, enabling complementary forms of citizenships, including local citizenship, would permit a combination, but also variation, of rights and practices to co-exist. In such a variegated citizenship landscape, it would be easier for the EU to establish its own citizenship contribution, based on an understanding of what the EU is and is not providing to its citizens. Rather than attempting to scale-up national citizenship, the EU might consider supporting the institutional diversity that is, historically, a hallmark of Europe.
WP3’s second result demonstrates that there is no uniform European model of national citizenship that can be reduced to a common set of legal principles ready to apply by EU institutions. By implication, attempts to synthesize an EU citizenship from the shared features of Member States’ national citizenship are unlikely to succeed. Underlying Europe’s various citizenship regimes is, nonetheless, a common set of social values that the EU might want to connect to more intensely. For the best part of a millennium, citizenship in Europe has been associated with equality, freedom and solidarity. In the present debates about migration, the Euro-crisis, and international insecurity, re-affirming such principles could help focus the EU’s various policy domains.
3.4 Work Package “Other Countries with Multi-Layered Citizenship and/or Rivalling Citizenship Claims” (WP4)
Work Undertaken
In the field of citizenship the EU, as a multi-national entity, faces problems that have been experienced by multi-ethnic and (con)federal states for decades, sometimes centuries.
Varying linguistic, ethnic, religious and civic identities have led to competing understandings and claims to citizenship. Accordingly, questions such as Who has the citizenship status (and how it is acquired) or What type of rights are citizens from different ‘categories’ entitled to, have been and still are part of the discussion almost everywhere. To date, and apart from a legal perspective, few studies have benefited from this rich set of experiences and practices to shed light on potential futures for EU citizenship.
Work Package 4 was divided into 10 tasks:
Task 4.1 provided with a theoretical and methodological framework for the analysis of the individual case studies and established the conceptual bases for later comparison of the case studies in task 4.10 which resulted in deliverable 4.10 providing a succinct summary of the case studies focussing on the lessons they contain for the European Union, and in the final manuscript “Citizenship in segmented societies: lessons for the EU” (deliverable 4.11).
Within tasks 4.2 – 4.9 WP4 analysed a selection of countries (Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Israel, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey) representative of different types of problems experienced due to multiple and rivalling identities of groups of citizens, as well as representative of different types of social, legal and political solutions tried.
This broad range of cases was studied from a historical, political and sociological perspective, by attempting to understand how different communities have in practice accommodated together into a single citizenship. Thanks to this approach, WP4 provided and assessment of how similar problems to those challenging the EU today have been faced by other political entities and of potential developments for EU citizenship.
Main results
The cases studied in Work Package 4 reveal two fundamentally different paths of addressing rival claims stemming from diversity and delivering solutions to respond to the communities’ claims.
A first path consists in emphasizing and protecting differences, whereas at the same time building a common set of institutions and values that encompasses all communities within the territory. Canada, Switzerland, and Spain – although with different degrees of success and acceptance of the ‘other’ communities – are examples in this regard. The second path consists in emphasizing and protecting unity and homogeneity, whereas at the same time trying to minimize differences. Again with different degrees of success, Czechia, Estonia, 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 trying to build an overarching layer of common institutions upheld by the identification of citizens with political institutions and procedures, as opposed to ethnic, linguistic or other cultural markers of identity. For this reason, the useful models for the EU are Canada and Switzerland. But there are also interesting findings concerning the unitary states that should be put forward. While it is true that the strategy of de-complexification was neither successful in creating a homogenous cultural nation in Estonia, Turkey or Czechia, nor is it in line with the declared values of the European union, some lessons can be drawn from the analyses of unitary states. The findings concerning the Kurdish community in Turkey show that a diversified political identity can be gradually construed within a unitary state, because not all issues that concern individual citizens relate to ethnicity and also the unitary nation-state can accommodate claims by producing and protecting public goods and common goods. Although Turkey has not been successful in accommodating Kurdish claims in this manner, the example shows that accommodation by conferring collective political rights to communities does not do justice to the diversified claims in differentiated modern societies either because the collectives, once recognized, contain new minorities and dissident individuals. Hence, both unitary and federal arrangements need to build common political institutions and they need to combine collective political and general individual rights with the production of public goods. It is not the case that the federalist model offers the total solution without the guarantee of individual rights, especially also the rights of individuals belonging to minorities in collective sub-units. How individual and collective political rights can be balanced is something that both unitary and federal states struggle with from different starting points. If nothing more, the Czech and Estonian cases show how this balance can be better achieved at local levels where pragmatic solutions are more immediately at hand. But in both cases the pressure of the overall pressure of the EU is an important ingredient. The Turkish case shows that redefining the nation in political terms can give a society some mileage in gaining ethnic minorities over to the political project of the majority ethnicity, but if the political nation is not defined by consensual strategies and forced into being by linguistic repression, among other things, the claims and grievances will remain vibrant and violence will not disappear.
In sum, what is probably to be considered as the best institutional practice is a federal model that deals with the problem that its sub-units might replicate the homogenization of the unitary state at lower levels with the organization of intermediary structures that bundle crosscutting interests and an overarching structure that guarantees a standard of general individual rights.
Regarding the non-territorialized communities, several solutions have been tried in WP4 cases.
As for the Roma community, the Czech case shows that the local and the European levels are the most effective in promoting Roma rights. Stigmatization of Roma as passive victims is negative for the protection of Roma rights; policies should be aimed at activating (socially and politically) the Roma community. Related to the migrant population, the Swiss case has shown that Swiss movers (the insiders, the equivalent to the EU movers) experience difficulties related to different languages and education/job systems. These issues have been dealt with at the federal level by trying to coordinate in specific policy areas such as education. Yet, the Swiss state continues to promote commuting instead of moving, which helps maintain cantonal autonomy in policy-making in identity-sensitive matters. As for the outsiders (the equivalent of the non-EU migrants), the Canadian case has applied a strong policy of control of immigration (in numbers) in coordination with the provinces, at the same time it has put in place policies of non-stigmatization of immigrants (to the contrary migrants are very much appreciated in Canada as they increase the richness of the country).
As this WP’s comparative studies show, the EU has tried to accommodate much greater diversity in much less time than any of the examples studied. The lack of stability and crisis-proneness of the EU system hence comes with no surprise. A second main finding is that the EU has tried to build identity via mobility whereas successful multinational identity building projects elsewhere in Canada and Switzerland have focused on the political autonomy and self-determination of the constituent parts while guaranteeing only formal freedoms of mobility and residence. The latter should certainly not be abolished in the EU, but it should also no longer be considered the overarching paradigm of European citizenship. As the overarching political structure the EU needs to be perceived as a guarantee and reinforcement of its constituent political entities. Formal freedom of movement notwithstanding, not every barrier to mobility is a barrier to European citizenship if the barrier is the consequence of the recognition of self-government of the constituent powers. Removing all the barriers to mobility would mean to undermine the consensus under which the EU is possible.
3.5 Work Package “Economic Rights” (WP5)
Work undertaken and main results
The first task of WP5 was the categorization of economic rights, which resulted in Deliverable 5.1. This report, which contains the key findings of this WP, gives a general overview of the concept “economic rights” in view of providing its identification and classification in the different legal systems. Key findings showed that at the national level property, labour, and economic enterprise are the three main areas in which economic rights can be recognized. However, differently from what is happening at the European level, where the EU has not only put the emphasis on economic rights, but has also actively promoted them (by actively promoting consumers to claim their rights), these rights do not compose a stable category in the national systems, because their legal recognition and/or constitutional status depends on the economic order in the relevant Member State and, related to this, on historical developments.
The second task looked at the transposition of the relevant EU instruments in several Member States and the resulting report describes the way in which EU instruments relevant to the rights mentioned under Deliverable 5.1 have been transposed into the national laws of some Member states and which problems occur for citizens in exercising these rights. It particularly focuses on three topics, which form the content of the case studies (task 5.3 see below), i.e. the protection of economic rights of consumers, the protection of citizens’ rights in the digital era and the regulation of professional qualifications. The research carried out uncovered that there are important differences among the various Member States in the implementation of EU instruments. Furthermore, it is interesting to see that differences do exist even among Member states that are geographically nearby, and in some cases even similar in their legal traditions. Indeed, the difficulties that citizens face in exercising economic rights differ rather substantially. For instance, in the Netherlands these obstacles proved to be of minor importance and this is due to the relative ‘openness’ of the Dutch economy and labour market. WP5 also acknowledged that obstacles to the exercise of economic rights range from legal barriers to more administrative and practical barriers. Moreover, informal barriers in the form of cultural ‘unspoken rules’ also affect the enjoyment of citizens’ economic rights.
In task 5.3 a cross-national study was conducted via three in-depth case studies, focusing on a specific area of economic rights:
(i) the barriers that professionals face in gaining access to the services markets in other Member States. The report focuses on the barriers to the recognition of EU citizens’ professional qualifications but also on related issues that could constitute an obstacle, such as legal, administrative, linguistic, digital and other practical barriers in five professional fields (lawyers, midwives, hairdressers, care givers/in-home nurses, and tourist guides). Language has been identified as a serious practical and legal barrier, both in terms of communication with national authorities, and in terms of proficiency requirements for gaining access to certain professions.
(ii) the capacity of the consumer to process information and make informed choices in the digital internal market. The findings show that there are five different challenges to be overcome, which start at the level of implementation of the EU legislation. Secondly, there is a lack of trust in (foreign) webshops. Thirdly, there are different rules in the Member States on contracts between businesses and consumers in case of e-commerce. Fourthly, in the Digital Single Market attention should also be drawn to the social rights of employees working in the e-commerce sector. Lastly, payment methods vary across member States.
(iii) the barriers that citizens face in managing, protecting and exercising their intellectual property rights in Europe. Here legal barriers to the exercise of economic rights can, for instance, be found in the absence of a unitary title of copyright at EU level, which has a negative impact on the proper functioning of the EU Single Market and on competition with US companies.
Finally, in Task 5.4 WP5 conducted a cross-task analysis of the specific practical linguistic barriers that economically active EU citizens and third-country nationals face in exercising their rights to free movement, which resulted in Deliverable 5.6.
WP5 observed that the EU’s multilingualism constitutes a barrier to the exercise of economic rights for citizens. On the one hand, language requirements may be essential in safeguarding economic rights of citizens, as knowledge of the language is crucial for traders and workers to be able to successfully access the market of another Member State. On the other hand, States are free to regulate the use of language(s) and set specific requirements, which leads to restrictions on free movement. The lack of a unitary language certificate at EU level, for instance, causes barriers to the exercise of economic rights. The European Union should thus foster a comprehensive linguistic policy with a view to prevent disproportionate national barriers to the exercise of economic rights of European Union citizens.
Moreover, within task 5.4 WP5 compiled a book titled “EU citizens’ economic rights in action” (Deliverable 5.7) which has been accepted for publication by Edward Elgar Publishing.
Policy recommendations:
Specific actions need to be properly and simultaneously taken into account in order to actively promote economic rights and to overcome barriers that still exist, which are mentioned in the policy brief “Reinforcing economic rights of EU citizens. Policy scenarios and recommendations from bEUcitizen, a research project on the barriers to realise and exercise citizenship rights by European Union citizens” (available here).
Firstly, the realization of ‘socially embedded’ economic rights and an emphasis on the collective dimension of economic rights, horizontal subsidiarity and recognition of common goods are important to make the internal market more sustainable. There are various ways for the European Union to strengthen the social dimension of the internal market. One way to achieve this is by carrying out a social impact assessment of its policies in the field of the internal market.
Secondly, the potential of the Digital Single Market must be recognized. It may represent a ‘commuting model’ more profiled on increasing cross-border sale and purchase of goods rather than on the mobility of citizens, while at the same time offering the opportunity to promote social and civil rights.
Thirdly. copyright rules should be harmonized, modernized and updated to current needs in order to properly boost intellectual property rights.
And lastly, a more comprehensive and coherent language policy is needed in order to reduce linguistic barriers; this could be done within the context of educational policies, which promote and increase a truly plurilingual environment. At the same time, the adoption of an EU language certificate could prevent the clash among national – regional language requirements and freedom of movement.
3.6 Work Package “Social Rights” (WP6)
Work undertaken
The first task of the work package concerned the answering of a questionnaire addressing obstacles to access social rights in selected EU Member States and it resulted in Deliverable 6.1 which provides a thorough inside in the obstacles to social rights. The national reports (Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden), on which D6.1 is based, showed a high degree of variance regarding the political discourses associated with EU citizenship and social rights and policies available for EU citizens in the areas of social assistance, housing, health and education.
Based on the answers to the questionnaire mentioned in Task 6.1 the second task studied how European Union instruments relevant to these rights have been transposed into national law and practice in the selected EU Member States and it confronted these findings with the applicable EU law (Citizenship Directive, Regulation 492/2011) and instruments of the Council of Europe. Then it was analysed which legal provisions function as a barrier for access to social rights and whether these are allowed by EU law. This critical analysis showed that there are differences in approaches and it was attempted to show a link between these differences and their impact on the barriers for EU citizens.
Task 6.3 a comparative study of how in social rights are subdivided into categories, concerned the nature of social rights. For this purpose national rapporteurs had to write an analysis of their system and had to have several interviews with stakeholders in various areas. The comprehensive report shows that there is no unanimity among policy actors as to the meaning of social rights and that the discourse and understanding of social rights is as variable within European countries as it is between them. The development of social policy is not grounded in a shared understanding of social rights. This is very helpful for making further recommendations and to combine the outcomes of D 6.1 6.2 and 6-4.
Thereafter, Work Package 6 looked at the possibilities and impediments of citizens seeking to enforce their social rights (task 6.4). National rapporteurs worked on national reports, based on a questionnaire, and the results were combined in the final comprehensive report (Deliverable 6.4) on legal protection of social rights. This research showed the large differences in the ways persons can (or cannot) realize their social rights and was used for making recommendations for taking away barriers.
Finally, within Task 6.5 WP6 compiled a book with a comparative analysis and theory of legal and sociological concepts and theories on the relationship between EU citizenship and social rights. This book is now submitted to Edward Elgar Publishing, after having been reviewed by a peer reviewer.
The book, titled European Citizenship and Social Rights: Entitlements and Impediments to Accessing Welfare and edited by Frans Pennings and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, gives an overview of the problems and tensions that occur when citizens claim welfare rights, in particular for EU nationals in a country different from their country of origin.
Main results
WP6 observed that social rights in the EU continue to be primarily determined by decisions at the nation-state level. Member States pursue very different approaches to social rights, leading to highly divergent outcomes. In addition, many countries pursue austerity policies that have led to stagnating or declining incomes for many citizens in South-Europe and an increase in poverty. In a number of Member States EU migrant citizens have been characterized within the political discourse as ‘poverty migrants’ or ‘benefit tourists’ who are taking advantage of the generous welfare system in the destination country. Moreover, populist parties tend to blame the EU for the many economic challenges and suggest that ‘national closure’ or the ‘control over our national borders’ would provide new opportunities for those who have been left behind by economic developments.
Although the EU continues to be a territorial entity with comparatively low levels of inequality and poverty from a global perspective, the EU institutions and Member States have to demonstrate to their citizens that European integration is not primarily about market integration, but benefits ordinary people and provides them with social rights. The initiative by the Commission for establishing a Social Rights Pillar within the aquis communautaire as well as the recent proposals to reform the system of social security coordination are an important recognition by the institutions that more needs to be done within the social domain; nevertheless, these initiatives seem insufficient to address the feelings and circumstances among socio-economically disadvantaged voters, or those who perceive themselves as being left behind.
Whilst Europe needs to develop a plethora of measures to develop a Social Europe that is worth its name, e.g. automatic fiscal stabilisers to absorb the effects of asymmetric shocks within the currency union, a bold step into the direction of a Social Europe could be the introduction of a European Minimum Income Scheme (Bruzelius/Reinprecht/Seeleib-Kaiser 2017, see also WP6 Policy brief Limited Social Rights And The Case For A European Minimum Income Scheme). Without bold action towards strengthening social rights the concept of EU citizenship is very likely to remain hollow for large proportions of the EU population with the consequence that further European disintegration and an end of the European project might become a plausible scenario.
3.7 Work Package “Civil rights” (WP7)
Work undertaken and main results
WP7 was divided into four tasks that resulted into eight deliverables:
Beginning with Task 7.1 WP7 identified which civil rights EU citizens as well as third country nationals, legally (formally) enjoy in selected Member States of the EU (i.e. Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland).
Across the EU, individuals derive civil rights from various legal sources at different levels. The main point of reference for civil rights protection in member states remains the national level. The ECHR, extensively and dynamically interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR), has gradually acquired a significant influence in defining and delimiting civil rights in Europe. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, has, until now, played a more marginal role, except where specific EU legislation adopted for the protection of fundamental rights (e.g. data protection, non-discrimination) is involved. The connection between EU citizenship and the EU Charter remains a loose one.
This diversity of sources of protection of fundamental rights is, in most cases, not so problematic, as the different systems tend to recognize and protect a similar set of civil rights and enforce usually comparable standards, whilst the ECtHR provides for minimum guarantees; yet, the scope of protection and balancing between rights (eg privacy v freedom of expression), or between civil rights and public interests or constitutional values (eg freedom of religion v secularism, security) vary from one setting to the other, as well as over time. Barriers to the effective protection of civil rights arise from the moment that individuals’ civil rights do not receive sufficient protection.
Rights without remedies risk remaining dead letter. The implementation and enforcement of EU law, including when it provides for the protection of civil rights, falls primarily on domestic institutions, including national courts. EU law provides that natural and legal persons have a right to an effective remedy before a tribunal against violations of EU law, but in practice, EU citizens and other individuals do not always enjoy accessible and effective remedies. In Task 7.2 WP7 looked at the modes of transposition and mechanisms available at European and national levels for granting and enforcing civil rights. The report covers Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Threats to important civil rights (eg right to fair trial, right to family life) sometimes results from EU instruments themselves (eg European Arrest Warrant, Brussels II regulation), and in such case, individuals can have a hard time challenging them before the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). They arise from the deficient legislative and executive implementation, and faulty administrative application of EU law at national level. Individuals can challenge them before national courts, resorting to national remedies, and (some) national courts are playing an important part in addressing and correcting problematic rules and practices.
In some countries (eg Hungary), barriers to the exercise of important civil rights arise from systemic deficiencies, including problematic constitutional and legislative norms, and the absence of effective judicial remedies.
In the majority of cases, European standards and interpretation prove supportive of civil rights. The problems lie not so much in judicial interpretation, but in mal-administration and legislative omissions. A concerning phenomenon nonetheless arises out of the interaction of domestic and European legal orders: the lowering of standards with reference to European law (both EU and ECHR). The risk of a ‘race-to-the-bottom’ in terms of civil rights protection in a real one, amplified by security concerns (e.g. terrorism).
Task 7.3 was a cross-national examinations of specific barriers that EU citizens (and third-country nationals) face when exercising their civil rights through four case studies; it resulted into four deliverables, which respectively focused on the obstacles faced:
1. in exercising core citizenship rights (i.e. residence) (Deliverable 7.3)
The derivative nature of EU citizenship creates inequalities between (potential) EU citizens, at times enabling, at other times preventing, access to EU citizenship for long-term resident Third Country Nationals and their family members.
The formal transposition of the right of movement and residence of EU citizens is relatively unproblematic in most Member States. There is however an important gap between formal laws and the actual realization of the rights they grant in day-to-day practices. Certain key concepts determining the exercise of EU citizenship rights (e.g. ‘sufficient resources’ in the case of non-economically active EU citizens), are subject to varying interpretations in the different Member States. National authorities, for example, appear increasingly inclined to deny residence (and access to social benefits) to poorer mobile EU citizens, for non-compliance with the residence conditions.
2. when trying to enjoy the freedom of expression (Deliverable 7.4)
The report exposed the lack of clarity and uniformity across the EU Member States as regards the legal status of ‘citizen journalists’ in relation to professional journalists. The standards, and institutional settings, differ significantly between Member States. This diversity can prove risky for those that provide information and news across borders, and for citizens-journalists who may not be aware of the legal framework(s) under which they operate. The lack of harmonized/minimum protection of the freedom of expression of citizen-journalists contrasts with the EU position on freedom of expression in external relations
3. in dealing with life events (Deliverable 7.5)
The general report exposed the disparities between national legislations, and their (potential) impact on EU citizenship and free movement in relation to a number of life events. Parentage and parent-child relationships is, for instance, one where Member States retain great autonomy, and opted for different solutions as regards the attribution of custody rights, adoption rules, etc.. This could carry negative implications for the mobility of EU citizens and their families between Member States. There is also significant diversity in relation to the attribution and composition of forenames and surnames. Similarly, the absence of uniform rules on marriage (e.g. gender, age, consent and forms) whereas an act facilitating legal residence in the EU or access to the nationality of a Member State (and consequently, Union citizenship) creates unequal opportunities across the EU. Moreover, whilst there are EU rules requiring a registrar to control the legality of acts before recording them in the registry, this control is generally made according to the applicable family law and (international) private law rules, which impacts free movement. .
4. in gaining access to travel documents”(Deliverable 7.6)
The report reveals that for EU citizens residing in a Member State different than their own, the procedure for obtaining these documents can be cumbersome and time consuming, as well as more costly (although not significantly). There are also particular challenges related to obtaining ID cards or passports for EU children born outside of their country of origin (delays in obtaining birth certificate, certified translations, etc.). The delays and complications caused by translation requirements should be alleviated with the coming into force of Regulation (EU) 2016/1191. In some quarters, citizens experience difficulties in understanding the complexity of the framework for obtaining travel documents, which calls for improving information. Moreover, concerns related to privacy have been raised in relation to the introduction of biometric features.
Finally, Task 7.4 is the synthesis of the results, which took two forms:
1. a cross-task analysis outlined the key-findings of all tasks, and identified common trends (deliverable 7.4).
The study revealed that the rights of EU citizens and their effectiveness are highly contingent on the national level and all that is conferred in top-down fashion can easily be jeopardised through mis-implementation and faulty application, whether intentionally or negligently. Furthermore, in several respects it emerged that in the exercise of civil rights, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights currently still lacks the maturity of the ECHR, though its importance is visibly growing. Lastly, to a considerable extent the obstacles to the exercise of civil rights result from social and cultural preferences in domains that lie close to the (perceived) national sovereign realm.
2. WP7 final manuscript “Civil Rights and EU Citizenship: Challenges at the cross-roads of European, national and private sphere” , which will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing.
Based on the findings of the project, the following policy recommendations can be made:
- Further develop and consolidate a ‘one-stop shop’ multi-lingual EU information, advice and problem-solving platform, to help EU citizens better the scope and limits of EU (citizens) rights and help them identify appropriate redress mechanisms; develop an interactive problem-identifying and solving tool (rights, remedies and support structures);
- Where competences exists (eg cross-border dimension), adoption of EU legislation setting out the (minimum) rights and obligations of EU citizens (eg citizen-journalists);
- Further EU guidance on important concepts (eg sufficient resources, durable relationship, scope of application of EU law, etc) which determine the application of EU rights;
- More systemic use of the infringement procedure to address administrative implementation and practical application problems of EU rights;
- Facilitate and encourage the use of the complaint form by individuals and NGOs to detect ‘systematic’ violations of EU rights;
- More rigorous scrutinuty of EU legislation for compatibility with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, in particular in sensitive areas;
- Reinforced EU monitoring of member states’ human rights performance, in collaboration between the FRA, Council of Europe bodies, human rights’ bodies, and NGOs;
- Pursuing formal (infringement actions) and informal mechanisms to address systemic Charter rights violations in member states (eg funding conditionality);
- Greater involvement of NGOs in EU policy and legislative and implementation processes;
- Financially support NGOs which assist victims of violations of EU rights, or generally contribute to holding states accountable for human rights violations;
- Further efforts to facilate the cross-border recognition of civil status documents.
3.8 Work Package “ Political Rights” (WP8)
Work undertaken and main results
The first objective of WP8 was to examine whether and to what extent the EU can be considered a source of limits to the exercise of old national political rights by emphasizing economic and other non-political rights of European citizens. In light of this first objective, the research carried out under Task 1 (Deliverable 8.1 Constraints imposed by Financial Markets on Political Choice in the EU’), showed that financial market constraints coupled with technocratic elements of EU decision-making can impose limitations on political choice both at the EU and member state levels, in particular in times of crisis. This constitutes an important challenge for the meaningful exercise of European political citizenship. The report shows the dominance of executive actors in EU-level and member states decision-making and the influential role of a transnational technocratic elite. In particular the exercise of parliamentary control at the national level is challenged. We also looked at the constraints imposed by competition rules on the process of democratic empowerment of citizens in the EU (task 8.2). Research showed 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. 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. Task 8.3 dealt with Regulation by litigation as a form of Empowerment. Do consumers and companies increasingly litigate to better enforce or even create consumer rights? This trend may empower individual citizens as consumers vis-à-vis companies, or the other way around. In the process however, national democratically accountable political actors might lose power, and hence their voters. Nevertheless, there is barely evidence on public interest litigation in the European Union. Contrary to influential concepts of “Eurolegalism”, public interest litigation in Europe is still very much entangled in national institutions.
The research allowed us to draw the following policy recommendations: first, to institutionalize procedures for public participation and parliamentary review and engagement during crises; second, to set some study groups and set criteria for discussion the role of the "firm in society"; third, to examine the institutional constraints on public litigation in Europe in order to strengthen its benefits.
The second objective of WP8 was to examine how effective the newly created democratic rights by the EU at the European level are: whether they are actually being used, by whom and for what purposes, and what may be the more practical obstacles to their exercise. To reach this objective, research was divided into 6 tasks: Task 8.4 focused on the involvement of national parliaments in the political system of the European Union and it analysed the ability of the national parliaments to establish a collective institution in order to carry out tasks which were assigned them by the Lisbon Treaty. As its main finding, the analysis revealed that national parliaments failed in period 2010-14 to establish effective collective institution. This failure substantially affecting parliaments´ ability to deliver more democracy to the EU political system is explained by huge institutional variety across chambers and parliaments. Moreover, the analysis found out that if the cooperation takes place, it is particularly shaped by technocratic and expertise factors limiting involvement of political actors. Task 8.5 dealt with democratic parliamentary control in times of crisis. The report provided a comparative analysis which tests the analytical framework that was advanced in task 8.1. In relation to each country setting it is shown that the limitation of viable political alternatives in electoral competition, the influential role of executive actors and bureaucratic transnational European elites as well as secrecy practices and in some cases the lack of appropriate accountability structures restrict the meaningful exercise of European political citizenship. Task 8.6 focused on the political inequality in the European Union and the role the European Parliament can play in the process of democratic empowerment of EU citizens. The findings show that low turnout is related to social inequality of voting. Socially weak EU-citizens are overrepresented in the group of non-voters. This in turn creates inequality in the democratic representation of social interests in the EP and European politics. On this basis it is argued that political equality as precondition for democratic empowerment of EU citizens needs institutional reform and politicization of social issues. It is wildly held that the political inequality among EU-citizens is related to the EU’s current institutional architecture. Also direct democracy in the European Union was investigated (task 8.7) One of the solutions proposed by scholars to deal with the alleged democratic deficit of the European Union is to favour direct participation of EU citizens in decision-making at the European level.
The European Citizens Initiative was the object of a comparative analysis under task 8.8. Taking stock of the EU’s most recent democratic innovation, the European Citizens Initiative (ECI), WP8 evaluated its potential to live up to its democratic potential. Findings suggest that the ECI is far from being unique and that some of the problems that surround its functioning are common to other systems. In addition, despite its novelty, some general patterns as well as indirect effects on member states can be detected. Whether the instrument could ever fulfil its democratic potential, let alone empowers European citizens remains very much an open question however. The evidence thus far presents a mixed picture. However, to continue develop mechanisms of public participation similar to the ECI. Task 8.9 discussed the European Ombudsman. One alternative open to individual citizens to question or even challenge government decisions in Europe is provided by the institution of the European Ombudsman. After assessing the European Ombudsman's potential to contribute to the democratic empowerment of EU citizens, researchers looked at potential barriers hindering citizens' access to the Ombudsman. In conclusion, it is argued that the European Ombudsman has a positive impact on the democratic empowerment of EU citizens while being also able to influence the legislative agenda of EU instititutions, thereby increasing their democratic accountability. It is therefore recommended to strengthen the role of the Ombudsman in public policy process and in particular increase public knowledge about its benefits to European citizens.
Finally, task 8.10 dealt with Education for a Civic Culture in the European Union. Various scholars stressed that political participation requires the backing of a political culture, a set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, perceptions and a sense of ‘identity, an expression of one’s membership in a political community’. This seems to be problematic in Europe. Its nation states, however, have over time developed vested traditions that promote citizenship, by socializing and educating people in a ‘civic culture. Research under this task compared different traditions in educating for citizenship in a selection of (old and new) Member States of the EU and showed how such an approach and practice could contribute to or hinder the development of a European civic culture.
Based on the results of the tasks falling within objective one and two, the third objective of WP8 was to explore and elaborate new future options for democratic participation and accountability in the EU. We found that the concept of EU citizenship had raised the expectation for democratic empowerment in the EU beyond the capacities of EU insertions and leadership to deliver. It is therefore not surprising the focus of the literature and the public agenda were on the "democratic deficit" of the European Union. Much less attention was paid to democratic empowerment via the EU institutions and policy process. Overall, extension of the right to participate by the EU can be seen as an instrument to increase its legitimacy (input legitimacy) rather than influencing the policy making process (output legitimacy). Influencing the policy making process in the EU is not an easy task. However, by looking at citizenship as status, which is close to the definition of European citizenship, it might be argued that these new forms did empower EU citizens and democracy and the EU. European citizens have much more opportunities today to participate in the EU policy making than before. The value of these new forms is unfortunately not clear enough, and more academic attention should be focused on the issue.
Based on the output of this work package, we could conclude that EU referenda should not be introduced without introducing direct democracy on the country levels. Country level referenda should not be introduced in a manner that is totally decoupled from the EU level. Second, even if the extensive use of referenda seems good a priori, it might lead to low turnout (and therefore in the case of the EU – low legitimacy). Unless well-entrenched in the political system, it seems more beneficial to have referenda only on the most important issues. From this perspective, it might be more advisable for the EU to only have mandatory referenda on single issues of treaty reforms (evidence on EU initiatives does however not indicate that the number of initiatives has increased dramatically since its institutionalization, but it might be too early to say). Third, European politics is consensual and can be expected to remain so if it became a semi-direct democracy. Introducing the optional referendum in secondary law making is therefore unlikely to have a transformative effect in this sense. In Switzerland, for example, it helped to constitute consensual forms of democratic politics. But the optional referendum can be expected to empower a variety of actors in different ways as intermediaries in the direct democratic process. In particular, national parliaments, the European Parliament and grassroots CSOs may be empowered by these new mechanisms of direct democracy.
The main results of the work carried out within this work package have been collected in the final manuscript “Democratic Empowerment in the European Union”, accepted for publication by Edward Elgar Publishing.
3.9 Work Package “Balancing Gender and Generational Citizenship” (WP9)
Work undertaken
The objective of WP9 was 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. WP9’s main focus on four themes:
1) the intersection of (elderly) care and migration regimes,
2) gender equality as a focus point of nationalistic and nativist political discourse,
3) marriage and parenthood/reproduction related rights, and
4) the right to move for young Europeans.
For this aim the countries represented in this WP (Croatia, Israel, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and in certain cases the United Kingdom) have been selected on basis of two criteria: their welfare regimes (the countries represent the five typical regimes types in the social policy literature; liberal, social-democratic, continental, Mediterranean and Eastern Europe) as well as migration regimes. They vary in: colonial histories, old and new migrant (care) workers, exocentric minority populations and one homogeneous country, and also in strictness of migration policies. As such the selected countries represent the variety of migration regimes at present in Europe.
The work undertaken in WP9 was divided into nine tasks:
Within Task 9.1 WP 9 looked at 27 National Reform Programmes focusing on the transposition of EU directives and guidelines with regard to four themes: care for the elderly, non-national care workers, the reproductive rights of family members, and mobile youth. Within each document, any mention of these themes was coded for analysis and then organized around sub-themes centered on potentially important subjects from a citizenship rights perspective.
The aim of Task 9.2 was to investigate, from a gender and generational perspective, the actual possibilities and impediments that EU mobile citizens experience in their access to social rights. The main results of the task are that selective criteria as means to prevent welfare tourism have been implemented by many countries. Access to these rights mostly depends on meeting requirements or possessing economic resources, which may be indirectly related to gender and generation as long as they are based on the applicants’ employment position. Therefore, because in many countries migrant women are employed in disadvantaged labour market positions, they are at greater risk of encountering practical barriers in meeting the requirements for social rights entitlements..
The aim of Task 9.3 was to analyze the use of European social, civil and economic family-related rights and obligations on basis of the findings of WP 3-8 and to collect the three conclusions resulting from an integrative seminar, which took place in June 2016.
First, a tension emerged between a worker-model/market-EU citizenship and political EU citizenship appeared, partly due to the lower participation of young people and lower-class women in the elections. Second, a tension arose between EU citizenship as an integrated status (as in national citizenship) and EU citizenship as a disaggregated form of citizenship. Third, a tension emerged between citizenship understood as a bundle of rights and citizenship as a social practice, that is between legal and substantial rights. The panel meeting concluded that these three tensions in combination represent the adverse European citizenship rights of women and the young in vulnerable areas of the labour market, such as in the domain of care.
Task 9.4 provides a cross-national pilot study on attitudes of national populations towards social and civil rights for family members in order to understand their evaluation of a) European efforts to converge social, civil and economic rights for family members, and b) European mobility of pensioners, care workers and youth on the move.
The analysis of the data (collected by a questionnaire based pilot study) shows cross-country differences and similarities in attitudes social and civil family related rights. Polarization was evident between more traditional countries (i.e. Italy and Croatia) and less traditional countries (Spain and the Netherlands) in terms of the European 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.
The central aim of task 9.5 was to understand the views of EP parties and social movements on family-related rights and values, in particular the position of the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM) on three policy issues of free movement of young women, migration and elderly care. The conclusions are the following: there is a tension in the ways in which these issues are framed; the EP level consensus in relation to mobility, elderly care and especially social rights is to some extent built on silences regarding potential implementation challenges due to large member state differences in welfare and migration regimes as well as labour market and care arrangement models. Differences in welfare systems, member state resistance to EU intervention in social policies, and the challenges of portable social security rights as well as debates on welfare tourism and welfare chauvinism are also left largely untouched.
Within task 9.6 WP9 studied 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 explored the extent to which migrant care workers from EU versus non-EU countries (i.e. TCNs) can exercise citizenship rights across the EU15 (Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain), new members (Croatia and Hungary) and non-EU states (Israel). The study shows that 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.
Task 9.7 (Deliverable 9.7) Report of case studies on gender equality as a focus point of national and nativist discourses, has identified similarities and divergences in framing migration, mobility, gender and family and the implications of these frames for European citizenship in 7 European countries plus Israel. The Northern, Southern and Eastern European radical right-wing parties share negative positions to migration and ethnic, religious and national minorities. The analysis also points towards important variations across the geographical divide in relation to internal mobility primarily attached to the economic dimension. In the West the parties perceive their citizens as invaded by migrants from other EU-countries, or in the East as being forced to migrate; both positions blaming the EU policies for the welfare problems their countries experience.
Gender, family and religious issues have moved to the welfare dimension, such as the support for ‘working mothers’, which has become part of a Conservative agenda to secure labour power and boost the national economy. The overall conclusion is that EU-citizenship is more contested than ever and the strengthening of the nativist and exclusive nationalist rightwing parties across Europe and in the EP challenges the EUs founding principles of free mobility of labour/open borders as well as the guiding principles of non-discrimination of nationalities, ethnicity and religion.
Task 9.8 was 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 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. The main conclusion of this article 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.
Finally, Task 9.9 which resulted in the article “Why young Europeans stay at home. Including stay & stay away factors in empirical migration research”, provides insights on motivations of young adults for inter European migration. The main finding is that, contrary to what we expected, the two most important Push and Pull indicators are non-economic but ‘discovering something new and meet new people’ and ‘the political situation abroad is better’. The third most important Push and Pull indicators is indeed an economic one: better job opportunities abroad. In addition, the most important Stay and Stay Away indicator is a non-economic one: ‘my home is here’, and the second most important Stay and Stay Away indicator is an economic one: having a good job in the home country. The third most important Stay and Stay Away indicator is again a non-economic one: not feeling qualified enough to migrate.
The main results carried out within this work package have been collected in the final manuscript “Gender And Generational Division In EU Citizenship”, accepted for publication by Edward Elgar Publishing.
Main results
A major conclusion of the research carried out is that the harmonization of work-related family policies at the EU-level so far only slowly is getting its reflection in family related social and civil citizenship rights. Indeed, there is tendency in an increasing number of Member States towards the recognition of the rights of ‘diverse’ family forms, and some lip service is expressed on the legal rights of domestic care workers. However, family and marriage law, LGBTI and reproductive rights so far are beyond the scope of the EU. Hence, a rather complex composition of EU citizenship rights comes to the fore, existing in more or less harmonized work-related economic and social rights combined with fragmented and dispersed family related social and civil rights. This EU citizenship of two parallel universes – one composed of unified rights and obligations, the other existing in subsets of fragmented rights - first and for all has consequences for Europe’s internal mobility. It both hampers and stimulates inter EU mobility though for rather distinct reasons. Work-related mobility will be sub-optimal if workers’ diverse family rights are not recognized in the Member States that are eager for their skills and capacities. Reproduction related mobility (either for having children or abortion) as well as care work related mobility in contrast are stimulated due to the variety of equal family related rights in the Member States. Variation in family related rights, however, does not only touch upon mobile European citizens, it also relates to reflections on boundary drawing in general; the boundaries between the economic arena, subject of the European policies and politics on the one hand and the private ‘home’ arena subject of the national policies and politics. Both have effects on gender- and intergenerational division lines by way of a double ‘domestification’ of gender- and intergenerational citizenship rights. First, the prioritization of work-related family policy (childcare, equal work-related rights) degrades family law, regulations and policies to a second order priority when it comes to EU citizenship rights. Secondly, the claim of national politicians to regulate their own domestic -national - family arrangements, despite the increasing tendency towards convergence, contributes to identity politics in which the increasing wish for diversity can be overruled by domestic national policy making.
3.10 Work Package “Balancing Citizenship of ‘Insiders’ and ‘Outsiders’” (WP10)
Work undertaken and main results
Work for Work Package 10 started with the mapping of specific citizen and non-citizen rights and obligations with respect to work, care and welfare in Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, the United, in and in Israel (task 10.1).
The study examined the principles that underpin access to state territory (immigration policy); to citizenship (naturalisation policy); and to income-based social benefits (social security policy). By examining these principles with respect to the rights and obligations of national citizens, European (EEA) citizens, and non-European/non-national citizens (TCNs) in the aforementioned countries, the analysis highlights the ways in which processes of inclusion and exclusion of citizens and non-citizens are not limited to a dichotomy of citizenship/non-citizenship, EU/non-EU citizenship. Across these three axes of inclusion and exclusion (mobility, naturalisation and social security), divisions among as well as between national citizens, EU and non-EU/non-national citizens are evident. Hierarchies of deservingness and undeservingness, of belonging and non-belonging, are shaped by ideologies of the nation, work, family and welfare, underpinning the terms and conditions of access to state territory, to citizenship, to state social provisions, which are rooted in the varying historical contexts of the countries included in the analysis. At the same time, those hierarchies have been influenced by the interactions of national and European policies, through which new processes of inclusion and exclusion between and among European and non-European citizens have emerged.
Task 2 was the analysis and report on National datasets on immigration, naturalisation, work, and welfare in selected countries. With the increasing value placed on data collection, and the growth of migration control as a policy topic, this report seeks to explore how migrants are captured in datasets and what this can tell us about the in/exclusion of different groups as explored in report Deliverable 10.1. For this report, WP10 partners explored their national datasets (Ireland, Netherlands, UK, Spain, Croatia and Israel), in the form of national labour force surveys (LFS), administrative and register datasets. We also looked at Eurostat harmonised data sources: the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) as well as the publicly available Eurostat database on migration statistics.
Comparing different states’ datasets it becomes clear that it is necessary to engage with their political history. Identifying a population as a population can stigmatise and risk reducing complex social processes to matters of identity. The politics of visibility are complex and also nationally particular. As this report shows, it is thus important to remember that statistical processes are not necessarily the neutral and benign form of enumeration they can be taken to be (Sussman, 2004), but can contribute to processes of ‘othering’ and normalised ideas of in/exclusion. Data about populations can “render rigid new conceptualizations of the human being” through their categorization (Hacking, 1982 in Sussman, 2004: 102). Processes of labelling can lead to the construct of bureaucratic identities (Zetter, 1991) and Werbner (2000) similarly argues that some ethnic minority categorisation is ‘imagined’ by the state for the control of populations. Thus, one needs to look behind the numbers at the framing of concepts embedded in statistical systems and what the data may be masking.
The third task analysed existing research and data on selected hidden populations and it resulted in the report on Citizenship and Work: Case Studies of Differential Inclusion/Exclusion. This report examined the ways in which the labour of specific groups, or specific types of labour, are excluded from labour markets in the selected states. The aim was to further develop interconnections and ideas of ‘gated citizenship’. Five case study social groups were selected: beggars, asylum seekers and refugees, domestic workers, EU migrant women, and people with disabilities. Each case study was led by a different partner. Partners explored grey/academic literature and available data on these case study groups; some case studies included original empirical work where this was feasible with additional funds.
As the cases referred to in this report highlight, inclusion within the labour market – being a worker – does not confer 'full citizenship', despite the ideal of the citizen as worker. It does not necessarily ensure access to rights of residence, to social security provisions, and employment protections. Nor does it necessarily enable economic independence. And not all economic activities make someone a worker. Nor do the strategies of those excluded from the status of worker, such as begging, in order to achieve an income, make them 'self-sufficient' citizens. Experiences of poverty and relative exclusion, and risk of poverty and exclusion, cut across those in and out of work, while exclusion from access to rights of residence, to social security provisions and employment protections (both those in work and out of work) places particular groups at greater risk of poverty, with implications for long term outcomes over the life course.
It is generally accepted that not being a citizen is a legitimate barrier to accessing the labour market, and that nationals should have priority access to jobs. In D10.1 Work Package 10 demonstrated that not being a worker is also a barrier to citizenship and that this is the case for EU citizenship, but also for national citizens. This deliverable went further and explored how not being the right kind of worker is a barrier to citizenship rights, and that this can be both about the kind of work that is done and the characteristics of the worker. There is a key contradiction between the requirement to be mobile for work and the requirement to ‘belong’ for access to social benefits. While attempts have been made to encourage an ideal of shared membership through EU citizenship, this imagined belonging in practice gives way to an emphasis on belonging as evidenced by stasis, by staying in one place i.e. belonging as being not mobile. The worker citizen must also belong in order to be able to have full access to rights.
Finally, Task 10.4 looked at the typology of the construction of citizen and non-citizen rights and obligations in the selected states. An analysis of deliverables 10.1 10.2 and 10.3 contributed to the policy brief on Mobility and Citizenship in Europe: From the Worker-Citizen to Inclusive European Union Citizenship and it led to the development of three peer-reviewed journal articles.
Policy recommendations for the EU
The crises facing Europe at present bring to the fore an urgent need to promote a more inclusionary model of EU citizenship as central to a renewed convergence within Europe.
While free movement has been a central principle to the development of the EU and EU citizenship over the past, and to facilitating intra-European mobility, the challenges of the present and future require a model which does not rely on the market as the basis for inclusion. A model that promotes solidarity and greater security for those marginalised from the European project. With the development of a European Pillar of Social Rights, there is the potential for a renewed European citizenship that supports access to improved living standards for all people living in Europe, irrespective of their position in the labour market and irrespective of their place of residence.
This could potentially involve the introduction of a ‘European Citizens Income’, providing an unconditional basic level of income to all, without the requirement of work or means-testing. Existing legal bases could be used to develop proposals for this measure. Such a scheme might act to provide direct benefits of European Union citizenship to all, enabling a European Union capacity to provide social protection to citizens across the member states, financed by a European Union-wide tax (e.g. a financial transaction tax, COM(2011) 594 final). More disadvantaged citizens, at greater risk of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion, would potentially experience the benefits of European citizenship in a very direct way without moving, and for some citizens the necessity to move diminishes. Those who do move would be able to do so without exposure to the risks that dependence on the status of worker entails. The interconnections between work and care in people’s lives are recognised and supported through this system, reinforcing the principle of gender equality as central to an inclusive European Union citizenship.
3.11 Work Package “Forward looking activities”
Work undertaken and main results
Work Package 11 focused on connecting research findings to the main challenge underlying the bEUcitizen project: to overcome and remove barriers for the exercise of EU citizenship and to stimulate social change towards an active EU citizenship. The objective of WP11 was therefore to identify and broaden the scope for future policy actions on the level of both the EU and the Member States and within the spheres of academia, law, government and civil society.
The forward-looking activities developed within WP11 are based on the research results of the other WPs and on feedback received from high-level policymakers, opinion leaders in politics, civil society and media.
The work was initiated and carried out along three parallel lines that ensure impact beyond the end date of bEUcitizen.
The first group of tasks (tasks 11.1 and 11.2) focused on developing practical tools for the assessment an forecasting of the impact on citizenship of new (EU and national) legislation and policies and on developing related tools for monitoring.
While the first deliverable explored how an EU citizenship impact assessment framework, or impact assessment tools, can look like and on what these should focus, the second one developed indicators to assess EU citizenship. These indicators are formulated based on existing (impact assessment) guidelines and documents and also on outcomes of the bEUcitizen project. The report shows an overview of the most remarkable topics from the deliverables: the link approach, vulnerable groups, vulnerable countries and regions, variation in national regulation and EU citizenship, and identity and EU community participation. These insights have led towards the following impact assessment indicators to assess EU citizenship:
1. Equality of treatment and opportunities, non-discrimination;
2. Access to and effects on social protection and security, health and education;
3. Security and justice;
4. Employment, labour market and job quality;
5. Freedom of movement;
6. Political participation;
7. Identity and EU community participation;
8. Inclusion and protection of particular groups, countries and/or regions.
Finally, a third deliverable presents in seven practical steps how to carry out an impact assessment for EU citizenship and includes a proposal for revising existing impact assessment documents for the Commission (see Figure 1 below).
<< Figure 1 >>
The second line (task 11.3) dealt with the development of contrasting future scenarios under the heading ‘EU citizenship 2030’ in relation to national citizenship. Representatives from several work packages have been engaged in reflection exercises during the final project phase on establishing scenarios for the medium-term development of EU citizenship practice. Their contribution resulted in a policy paper series which includes seven policy briefs (deliverable 11.4. These policy briefs, which are all available on the bEUcitizen website, identify current dynamics and propose developmental scenarios with specific recommendations for policy-makers
The second outcome of this task is deliverable 11.5 a report outlining four thinkable scenarios for Europe and EU citizenship in 2030, some more utopian and some more dystopian in character. The most significant outcome of the analysis and workshops is that in all scenarios civil society can play a critical role to foster EU citizenship. Therefore, investing in a resilient civil society is regarded to be of high importance to protect, foster and develop EU citizenship.
Lastly, task 11.4 refers to the task on stimulating understanding among young people of citizenship rights and obligations. For this task teaching packages on EU citizenship for secondary school pupils in the age of 14-16/17 have been developed. The teaching packages do not intend to lobby for or create support for EU citizenship, but it intends to make EU citizenship visible in a realistic way; showing concrete relevance not only for ‘movers’ but especially for those who stay at home; and showing how EU citizenship is directly related to one’s daily life and how one can influence these choices.
The themes of the teaching packages are:
1. Getting my rights: Europeanization at home
2. Lobbying and getting in touch with the EU
3. Organizing our interest
4. Travelling around
5. Advising the EU in solving global problems.
All materials will be distributed via the website: http://beucitizen.eu/teaching-packages/
Potential Impact:
4.1 Potential impact and wider societal implications
The following intended impacts were identified from the very beginning for the bEUcitizen project: 1) A boost in academic research on EU citizenship, 2) Policy development, implementation and evaluation to encourage citizenship and remove barriers, and 3) Civil realisation of EU citizenship rights and responsibilities.
Firstly, the contribution bEUcitizen made to the academic community is threefold:
1. Contribution to (conceptual) understanding of (EU) citizenship and the barriers towards EU citizenship:the research findings have been used to develop various narratives on EU citizenship, thereby not only contributing to the current debate on citizenship but also moving beyond the state of the art of citizenship research. The multidisciplinary character of the bEUcitizen project allowed us to study European citizenship in a more innovative way. Case studies accompanied a conceptual analysis of citizenship. This resulted in a more comprehensive understanding of the concept of citizenship in the different research fields, and across different times and spaces.
2. Methodological impact:. by combining the normative and empirical disciplines, bEUcitizen also combined and integrated diverse methodological paradigms, tools and instruments. Taking into consideration that EU citizenship is not only a legal principle but also a social practice as well as a historical process, the methodological challenge of the programme was to raise mutual understanding amongst scholars with different backgrounds and from different disciplines, to share different methodological approach, to implement a truly multidisciplinary approach to the multidimensional character of citizenship, and to sustain substantial coherence to the project
3. Boost research on the interplay of rules and practices: by combining empirical and normative methodologies, the project furthered research on the interplay between rules and practices.
The academic community was and will continuously be reached by means of (scientific) publications (see in particular the bEUcitizen book series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on EU Citizenship) and through networks, platforms and events such as seminars and academic conferences.
Secondly, the bEUcitizen project set out to actively affect policy development, implementation and evaluation to encourage citizenship and remove barriers. To this end, policy makers have been an important focus group for the projects’ dissemination activities, in particular during the last year of the project.
The process of translating the results from the Deliverables into concrete policy recommendations started early 2016 and resulted in the policy paper series ‘EU Citizenship 2030’ composed of 7 policy briefs written by leading researchers in the bEUcitizen project. The policy briefs were published online in January 2017 and distributed at the project final conference (April 2017).
There are two separate yet interrelated themes of the bEUcitizen policy briefs through which they are expected to impact on current debates about EU socio-economic policies and the socio-economic prospects for citizens. One is about addressing social inequalities, the other about increasing legitimacy of EU decision-making. As for the first, the policy brief by Eberl and Seubert argues that social inequalities create a vicious voting cycle where lower classes feel increasingly disappointed and convinced that their vote does not matter. These citizens therefore effectively stay away from ballots) while political elites in return tend to only focus on those who vote, thus, further alienating lower classes with their policies. The policy brief by on social rights by Seeleib-Kaiser focuses on policies in the area of social protection. He advances the idea of a European Minimum Income Scheme within the euro area to tackle social inequalities. In a similar vein, bEUcitizen researchers Anderson, Shutes and Walker propose an EU-level capacity to provide benefits directly to EU and non-EU citizens in order to decrease social inequalities through more convergent national policies. These policy briefs are meant to directly contribute to the debate about future EU and, in particular euro zone reform. The policy brief on civil rights of citizens by Granger stresses the need to use a different approach to the free movement principle which should be dependent upon the levels of solidarity EU member states are open to take upon themselves. Granger holds the creation of an EU-level safety net and the consolidation of the status quo by graduate and selective access to social assistance as the most attractive choices. With respect to economic rights of EU citizens, the policy brief edited by De Vries a.o. stresses the need to socially embed economic rights and to propose new policies to advance the recognition of professional qualifications and to implement the digital single market. Knijn and Oomkens focus specifically on the issue of long-term care, and propose further directives on cash-for-care systems, ‘care leave for kin’, and employment conditions for care workers that could have a serious impact on the sector. Through these proposals bEUcitizen policy briefs make concrete contributions to policy reform and the improvement of socio-economic conditions within the Union. The advancement of proposals for alternative legitimacy devices by bEUcitizen researcher Cheneval are targeted to impact on debates about Treaty change and the adjustment of member states’ own constitutional frameworks. These proposals include plebiscites and direct democracy tools that would require an expansion of democratic mechanisms at the member state level as well.
Furthermore, within WP11 a citizenship impact assessment tool has been developed, which will serve as a practical tool for policy makers to assess consequences of policies for EU citizenship and broaden their perspective on what to include and who to consult.
Existing Commissions impact assessment guidelines do not focus on EU citizenship impact. The focus is on economic, social and environmental impacts. Therefore, in order to make decision makers aware of the risks for new barriers for citizens when exercising their citizenship rights, it is necessary to include EU citizenship. Our proposals contribute to a more comprehensive - and at the same time more practical - impact assessment framework that focus on environmental, economic, social and EU citizenship impacts. The proposals focus on both the European and the national level and include quantitative and deliberative practices. In this way, we guarantee that parallel attention will be paid to the ‘right’ and ‘community’ dimension of EU citizenship within an impact assessment tool, and – as a result – policymakers will get insight in the juridical aspect of EU citizenship as well as the grass root experiences of individual citizens.
In addition, based on the outcomes of the bEUcitizen project and five scenario workshops, Work Package 11 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), which are presented in Deliverable 11.5: Scenarios for EU citizenship in 2030- Repertoires for action in thinkable futures. 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. 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
Finally, in various Member States events have been organized with bEUcitizen participants to discuss the results of our research with policy-makers. Noteworthy is the final bEUcitizen conference, where two lunch meetings specifically addressed to policy makers were organized and that respectively focused on the European Pillar of Social Rights and on the White Paper on the Future of Europe (Five scenarios).
Thirdly, a crucial aspect of the project was to identify ways in which European citizens become aware of and can be encouraged to exercise their rights. To make a lasting impact on the experience and exercise of European citizenship, bEUcitizen realized from the very beginning that it is particularly important to reach young people in Europe, especially those young Europeans who are still in school or who have just started their careers and/or families, and are under the age of thirty-five.
Work Package 11 was specifically designed to target this group of young Europeans and it developed a set of five teaching packages that are available on the bEUcitizen website. Furthermore, several workshops on future scenarios have been organized, of which the two most important are: Breaking Down Barriers: Future scenarios on youth and citizenship in 2030, side event organized in the context of the mid-term and annual Conference on June 29-30 2015, in Zagreb (Croatia); The future of Europe - Exploring strategies for strengthening EU Citizenship, future creating workshop organized as kick-off of the final conference on April 25 2017, Brussels (Belgium).
4.2 Main dissemination activities
A broad array of dissemination channels have been conceived and implemented to boost the visibility of the project and in order to guarantee that the most relevant project outcomes were communicated to the widest audience possible, in the most effective way.
A first dissemination plan (Deliverable 12.1) was submitted in November 2013 and it was further elaborated in the dissemination strategy plan (Deliverable 12.4) submitted in January 2015. The plan was designed to maximize the potential impact of the project through the implementation of targeted dissemination activities for the findings of the project. To this end, three main target groups have been identified:
1. The Academic Community
2. Policy Makers
3. Young Europeans
In order to maximize the potential impact on these target groups, specific dissemination activities and ambitions have been developed for each target group specifically.
Key dissemination tools and activities conducted by the project are described below:
Public Website
The official website of the bEUcitizen project is available at http://beucitizen.eu/
The objective of this website is to disseminate any kind of information project-related to a wide audience in a fast and accessible manner. During the project lifetime, website visitors were informed about the project’s concept, progress and innovative results. All deliverables accepted by the European Commission can be downloaded from the website.
The website was created and updated by Utrecht University (with support of all participants), and will be maintained and hosted by UU after December 2017.
bEUcitizen Blog series
From the beginning of the project a series of blogs has been published on the website. The blogs have been written by a great number of bEUcitizen researchers and members of the Advisory Board and have drawn attention to topical issues on EU citizenship, which are addressed from different disciplines.
Social networks
BEUcitizen made also use of social networks, as Twitter (@bEUcitizen) and Facebook (@bEUcitizen).
Newsletter
The main purpose of the newsletter was to provide up-to-date information to interested parties about the activities performed within the scope of the project, results achieved as well as upcoming events of interests.
A total of 6 newsletters were published during the lifetime of the project, more precisely :
- Newsletter 1, December 2013, which presented the project, the activities performed during the first six months and reported on the kick-off meeting;
- Newsletter 2, July 2014, with a focus on the first research results and on the first annual meeting in Istanbul from June 30th to July 2nd 2014;
- Newsletter 3, December 2014, gave visibility to the achievement of three important deliverables (D3.1 D7.1 and D9.1). Furthermore, the newsletter served as means of distribution of the Call for papers for the 2015 Mid - Term Conference, entitled: Being a Citizen in Europe (Zagreb, 2015);
- Newsletter 4, August 2015 reflected on the "Being a citizen in Europe" Conference held in Zagreb (29-30 June 2015), reported on the parallel workshop organized for students “Breaking Down Barriers: Future scenarios on youth and citizenship in 2030 – Youth and access to education, labor and political decision making” and on the Circus Europe Art Exhibition;
- Newsletter 5, January 2016, which presented the latest deliverables published and the most important results achieved so far; and
- Newsletter 6, February 2017, which contained an overview on the six Policy Briefs released by bEUcitizen Consortium members and presented the bEUcitizen Final Conference.
- Newsletter 7, June 2017, with a reflection on the project by Prof Sybe de Vries, the report of the final conference and some final updates.
In addition, the newsletter was also used to circulate the Call for Papers for the two-day international and interdisciplinary conference “Being a Citizen in Europe”, which took place on 29 - 30 June 2015 in Zagreb (Croatia).
Corporate identity
An integral part of our dissemination strategy was our corporate identity. All communication from and within the project had the same, uniform lay-out, use of logo’s and colours. The logos developed for the project reflect the many aspects which reflect the many ‘multiples’ of our project:
<< Figure 2>>
Policy briefs
As stated above, seven policy briefs have been published with a view to communicate policy relevant results and to attract the highest attention from policymakers.
The bEUcitizen project as a whole aimed to provide a comparative overview and classification of the various barriers to the exercise of rights and obligations of European Union citizens in the member states. Simultaneously the project analysed whether and how such barriers can be overcome and the future opportunities and challenges the European Union and its member states face to further develop the idea and reality of European Union citizenship.
This series of bEUcitizen policy briefs is particularly oriented towards this latter dimension and engages with key issues for the future development of EU citizenship. Leading researchers from the bEUcitizen project built on the results of bEUcitizen research in outlining scenarios of future developments of EU citizenship and in presenting concrete proposals for policy action. The policy briefs have a strong orientation towards the nearby future, the coming 10 to 20 years and present in most cases alternative scenarios. All policy briefs have been published on the bEUcitizen website, under “Publications”. Furthermore, they were circulated within our mailing list with Newsletter n.6 February 2017, and they have been printed and distributed at the final conference (26-28 April 2017, Brussels).
Conferences and Workshops
The most important channel for engaging with the Academic Community and Policy Makers was the organisation of high-level conferences and events. .
If during the first years the main aim of these presentations was to introduce bEUcitizen to the Academic Community, in the last year, when results were available, conferences and seminars would become the main platform to discuss findings, to collect suggestions and to exchange knowledge with other scholars and professionals. Furthermore, conferences and national events proved to create important opportunities for involving local policy makers and civil society organizations.
Setting up an efficient structure for the dissemination activities that involve all consortium partners was one of the main goal. Part of this structure is that all partners in the consortium organized local dissemination events in their home countries, and, when possible, in their own language.
Participation to external events
The bEUcitizen community participated in many external events related to the topic of the projects. They were a precious opportunity to further spread the research outcomes and interact with different stakeholders.
From the very beginning, all our researchers have been asked to keep track of the activities undertaken that represented a mean to circulate our project and to create awareness about it.
Teaching packages
Work package 11 developed 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. 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.
Other dissemination tools:
We realized that short videos and visual art are also powerful tools to communicate academic results to the wider public. Therefore, alongside our academic activities, we cooperated with visual artists and poets, visualizing the theme of European citizenship
- Videos: a video series was developed by our project, which consists of 5 short videos that address the challenges the EU and its citizens are facing. Each documentary uses a simplified language and approach in order to be understandable for a wider audience. The main characteristic of the produced video are of simplicity, clarity and entertainment. The videos are publicly available on our website as well as through our social media channels (twitter, facebook, linkedIn and youtube). More information are provided below.
- Circus Europe: Circus Europe is a project by visual artist Machteld van Buren and poet Peter van Lier. In the large collection of collages “Circus Europe”, Machteld illustrates how the struggle for survival is being waged in various European countries. Some countries are depicted as an animal: the body consists of a map onto which the realistic head of an animal has been superimposed. Other countries are the playground for animals, performing acts that are indicative of how each nation functions. More information on Circus Europe can be found here: http://circus-europe-exhibitions.blogspot.nl/
We hosted two expositions of the Circus Europe art project: the first one at the Zagreb Conference of bEUcitizen at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb, from 29 June till 2 July 2015 and the second one at the bEUcitizen final conference hosted at the Residence Palace, Brusself, from 26 to 28 April 2017
The complete list of dissemination activities (organization of and participation to conferences, seminars, workshops and other events; interviews; presentations; online presence, etc.) and publications is provided separately in the appendix of this document. It was reported in more detail in the project’s periodic progress report and in Deliverable 12.5.
4.3 Exploitation of results
Publications in academic journals
Some of the findings of the bEUcitizen research has been submitted for publication or published in peer-reviewed academic journals; this will ensure maximum impact from the scientific work that was carried out. Journals targeted for paper publications included the ones in which our researchers have previously been published, like Social Politics, Journal of Social Policy, Constellations, Nordic Journal of International Law, European Intellectual Property Review, International Public Administration review, European Labour Law Journal, to mention just a few.
Book series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on EU Citizenship
The results deriving from the work undertaken in the different Work packages have been collected in the bEUcitizen book series: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on EU Citizenship, which will be published by Edward Elgar Publishing in Spring 2018 (see announcement below, Figure 3).
The series looks into the main issues relating to EU citizenship, and citizenship in general, from different angles and from a multi-disciplinary approach. It approaches and analyses the concept of EU citizenship in a coherent and integrative manner, yet from a set of unique and distinct perspectives. The point of departure is that citizenship is not merely a legal notion of rights produced by statute and/or case law, but something that has developed and develops in the interchange between rules and practices, between law, politics and society. So studying citizenship issues requires an interdisciplinary approach, which is offered by the bEUcitizen interdisciplinary team of contributors to the series from various relevant disciplines including: law, philosophy, history, sociology, political science, economics and policy studies. This important series addresses both the normative and empirical dimensions of citizenship, and will further stir the debate on citizenship questions in Europe and beyond.
The audience for the book series is varied. The book series will appeal first of all to academics and students in quite a variety of academic disciplines. The latter are organized in relative large academic associations, in which many members of our research team actively participate, in some cases also in their leadership. Hence the book series will be promoted through their communication channels: conferences, email-networks, websites, etc.
Furthermore, given the fact that ‘citizenship right issues’ figure prominently on the EU-policymaking agenda, the book series addresses practitioners and policymakers in European institutions as well as in the national political, administrative and policy advisory institutions in the different EU Member States, and especially their aides, commercial policy advisors, and the numerous lawyers and lobbyist organizations in Brussels.
Finally, the books might be used in academic courses on a variety of topics related to citizenship and in quite a variety of academic disciplines: law, history, geography, philosophy, political science, social policy, sociology, socio-legal studies or economics.
<< Figure 3 >>
EU citizenship teaching packages for secondary school pupils
Within Work package 11 we developed 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:
1. Getting my rights: Europeanization at home
2. Lobbying and getting in touch with the EU
3. Organizing our interest
4. Travelling around
5. Advising the EU in solving Global Problems
The overall goal of these teaching packages is to teach secondary school pupils about EU citizenship. With these teaching packages we pursue three concrete goals. We want the pupils:
a) to discover what rights they have as EU citizens, both during their daily life at home, and when traveling around;
b) to develop the necessary competencies to get access to, realise and/or enforce their rights;
c) to develop the civic and political competencies to participate in the variety of political communities on different levels they belong to in order to make their voices heard in decision-making on all levels.
The teaching packages are available on the bEUcitizen website (http://beucitizen.eu/) and will be further distributed via Europa Teachers' Corner webpage (see flyer below, Figure 4.)
<< Figure 4 >>
Videos
Together with Beatrice Ngula Kabutakapua we developed a series of 5 short videos that address the challenges the EU and its citizens are facing, with the aim to not only make our research more accessible for the (Young) European citizen, but also to help policymakers in understanding the different tensions and barriers that are still persistent in the European citizenship.
Each film seeks to explain the rights of EU citizens and the persistent barriers towards European citizenship in a simple language with a view to attract a wider audience and the public at large. The videos are thus distinctive in their simplicity, clarity and entertainment. The videos are available on the bEUcitizen website
Maintaining the network
The bEUcitizen consortium will continue to disseminate its outcomes beyond the project duration, by attending academic events (several participants will participate in the ECIT Summer University – “Countering threats to European citizenship across borders, reconfiguring its future” which will take place from 30 August 2017 to 1 September 2017 in Brussels), publishing in academic journals and by organizing events at local level.
The activities organised by the project and the outcomes obtained have led to new ideas for research proposals and plans to better integrate existing projects.
Following the collaboration on the bEUcitizen project, Utrecht University, Central European University and Oxford University are already collaborating in the H2020 project ETHOS, ‘Towards a European Theory of Justice and Fairness’, coordinated by Utrecht University. In addition, Oxford University and London School of Economics are partnering on an application to ESRC on citizenship post Brexit. Furthermore, Utrecht University, Goethe University of Frankfurt and University College Dublin are partners in a Horizon2020 application on the Rule of Law, Democracy and Sovereignty.
Finally, the core group of the bEUcitizen consortium is looking into possibilities to build upon the existing network and to establish an interdisciplinary research network in the field of EU citizenship.
List of Websites:
Website
The bEUcitizen website can be found at the following link: http://beucitizen.eu/
Coordination
The project is coordinated by Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
Coordinator:
Prof. Dr. Sybe de Vries
Utrecht University | Achter Sint Pieter 200 | 3512 HT | Utrecht | Tel: + 31(0)30 253 7271 or + 31(0)30 253 7047 | Email: S.A.deVries@uu.nl
Co-coordinator:
Prof. Dr. Frans van Waarden
Utrecht University | Email: f.vanwaarden@uu.nl
Project logo:
<< Logo >>
Contact Names Per Work Package:
WP2: Sandra SEUBERT, Prof. Dr.,
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt a.M | Email : seubert@soz.uni-frankfurt.de
Prof. Dr. Frans van Waarden
Utrecht university | Email: f.vanwaarden@uu.nl
WP3 : Patrick WALLIS, Prof. Dr.
London School of Economics | Email : p.h.wallis@lse.ac.uk
Maarten PRAK, Prof. Dr.
Utrecht University | Email: m.prak@uu.nl
WP4: Francis CHENEVAL, Prof. Dr.
Universität Zürich | Email: francis.cheneval@philos.uzh.ch
Prof. Dr. Frans van Waarden
Utrecht university | Email: f.vanwaarden@uu.nl
WP5: Elena IORIATTI, Prof. Dr.
University of Trento | Email: elena.ioriatti@unitn.it
Prof. Dr. Sybe de Vries
Utrecht University | Email: S.A.deVries@uu.nl
WP6: Martin SEELEIB-KAISER, Prof. Dr.
University of Oxford | Email: martin.seeleib@spi.ox.ac.uk
Frans PENNINGS, Prof. Dr.
Utrecht University | Email: f.pennings@uu.nl
WP7: Marie-Pierre GRANGER, Prof. Dr.
Central European University | grangerm@ceu.edu
Prof. Dr. Sybe de Vries
Utrecht University | Email: S.A.deVries@uu.nl
WP8: David LEVI-FAUR, Prof. Dr.
Hebrew University of Jerusalem | Email: levifaur@mscc.huji.ac.il
Prof. Dr. Frans van Waarden
Utrecht university | Email: f.vanwaarden@uu.nl
WP9: Manuela NALDINI, Prof. Dr.
University of Turin | Email: manuela.naldini@unito.it
Trudie KNIJN, Prof. Dr.
Utrecht university | Email: G.C.M.Knijn@uu.nl
WP10: Bridget ANDERSON, Prof. Dr.
University of Oxford | Email: bridget.anderson@compas.ox.ac.uk
Isabel Shutes, Dr.
London School of Economics | Email: i.h.shutes@lse.ac.uk
WP11: Uwe PUETTER, Prof. Dr.
Central European University | Email: puetteru@ceu.edu
Wieger BAKKER, Prof. dr.
Utrecht University | Email: w.e.bakker@uu.nl
