Special Workshop Abstracts

Special Workshop Title:	European Citizenship in the New EU Member States
Author:	Hannele Isola-Miettinen, University of Tampere
Paper Title:	EU-Citizenship and Rights?
Abstract:	In this presentation it is shortly focused the legal concept named EU-citizenship, from perspective of rights. Namely the EU-citizenship was established by the Treaty of Maastricht forced in 1993. Before that the concept was not articulated in the treaty texts. Instead, in several treaty articles there was referred to the nationals of member states. EU citizenship covers both the natural persons and legal persons, like enterprises. In this presentation it is focused the dimension and the ‘weight’ of the rights belonging to EU-citizenship of natural persons. What is the primary function of the rights belonging to EU-citizenship? When the new member states enter into union, the citizens of those states will do have the EU-citizenship status. All persons, having residence in old or in those new EU member states, do not have or receive automatically EU-citizenship status? The precondition, qualification, for having the status in the community level is, that the person first has the nationality of some EU member state. If someone has residence, but not the nationality of some EU member state, remains that person outside of the EU citizenship status. But what is the content of rights belonging to the EU citizenship? What are the main differences between having EU citizenship and not having that status, for example? In the treaty texts there are articles where the citizenship rights are expressed. The EU-citizenship rights are, principally, limited to following: the right of free movement and residence in member states, right to vote and stand for election in local and European Parliament, right to formulate petition to the European Parliament, right to appeal to the EU ombudsman and right of access to diplomatic or consular representation in certain non-member states. In this presentation it is not enumerated the rights, but considered the weight and importance of those rights to individuals. Do the rights have primarily economic, social, political or some other weight and function? In presentation there is also studied if the Charter for Fundamental Rights brings new contents to the citizenship concept? Does this document increase or change the role or substance of the citizenship-status?