Being Europeans, being citizens

Just over two years ago, I had the good fortune to act as rapporteur for the European Parliament's report on the application of the Treaty provisions relating to citizenship of the Union. In drafting it, I was particularly aware that European citizenship is one of the most important pieces of legislation that has been adopted following the establishment of the Union.

Let us understand, however, that not many decades have passed since European citizenship was adopted - in 1992 - and came into force. The Union was created after the Second World War to secure peace and to benefit from the economic wealth of a more open market, to have mass to trade with others, but freedom of movement, the freedom to be able to study, to live throughout the Union, is not something as simple as moving a commodity.

We have European citizenship rights associated with citizenship of our Member States, and it gives us a number of added electoral rights, consular rights, among other direct rights, but the practical implementation shows deficits. It was for that reason that I took the view that the big issue is to complete the success of European citizenship by putting it - with its rights - at the heart of the political system.

In the report we adopted as a seed for the future the proposal for the compilation of secondary legislation, to see the holes in the current model and to draw up a Union citizenship statute that would provide the citizen with the tools and knowledge to place him or herself at the centre. The Statute would mean bringing together in a single text the specific citizens' rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the various EU rules and case-law.

When the report was adopted, we were nearing the end of the previous parliamentary term. Since then, we have had to face the most critical existential situation since the beginning of the European project, and the fact is that we have known in our own flesh what non-Europe would have meant. What it would have meant to face us like boats adrift in a terrible ocean storm. In a general sense, we are getting through because the mechanisms of liquidity for the system, of mutual support and of vaccines have been put in place in a common way.

The times we are living through, yes, have brought grief, especially for the hundreds of thousands of Europeans who have died, but they have also served to show a strength that has hitherto been in the shadow of the Union's economic successes. That strength has been to show that it has the capacity to protect citizens and to offer solutions based on solidarity and to put the common European interest before any other.

Now is a good time to keep pulling on that thread and give the citizen a convincing case for embracing and improving what we have. 

In 2019, I spoke to colleagues in the Constitutional Affairs Committee about the children of today. I encouraged them to think that the successful suit of today's European citizenship would be small by the time they grew up. That it was not about us, it was about them. We know there are holes in this basket and we have a chance to stop what we have achieved from slipping through them. The Conference on the Future of Europe is underway and, like a summer festival, it offers many stages for European citizens, especially the youngest, to contribute and express themselves. 

It is the first major opportunity to push forward the recommendation made in the Citizenship Report and to call for the Statute to become a reality. Article 25 TFEU is the framework for implementing concrete initiatives and consolidating the specific rights and freedoms held by the citizen, and no major reforms are needed to elaborate it.

The law has fallen short of reality. There are shortcomings, there are deficits and there is a need to give real scope to some of these freedoms.

I am referring, for example, to the need for reflection on citizens' right to vote and to stand as candidates in European and municipal elections. It is crucial that their value is properly understood if we want healthy and solid democracies. It is necessary that displaced persons are not left without the right to vote because bureaucratic impediments prevent them from doing so or make it practically impossible, as has been detected.

It is also important to incorporate new means of exercising active citizenship, politics, which is key to building much more inclusive, more prosperous, more responsible societies, with less risk of temptation to exclusionary populism. Nationalist and populist ideologies are never harmless, because they poison the true core of democracies: our minds, because they make it increasingly difficult to manage disagreements, which is the way to face challenges and generate public spaces where answers and agreements agreed by broad majorities are possible. And because exclusionary political dogmatism always leads to a reduction in rights, discrimination and prejudice.

Our responsibility is to propose improvements that provide concrete solutions also when it comes to completing what European citizenship means. 

The freedom of movement of people is enshrined, it is true, but it has important limits in its application; it is time to complete it and to promote European programmes that nurture the possibilities of mobility among young people. It is also time to solve problems that our current society presents and that are not covered by the law: digital European citizenship, the common European curriculum, etc.

This work must be done without ambiguity or timidity. A Statute adapted to what European society demands today can be a very effective way to raise the quality of our democratic systems and to ensure that it is the citizens who are the guardians of that quality. It is also essential to strengthen our democratic institutions so that corruption does not take root in the structures that govern and direct us. Our aim must be to prevent democratic states from experiencing fragmentation and setbacks in the common good.

Maite Pagazaurtundúa, MEP.