Since 1992, citizenship of the European Union has been automatically granted to anyone who is a national of a Member State of the European Union. European citizenship is said to be “superimposed”: it is added to national citizenship without replacing it (Article 9 TEU and Article 20 TFEU).
The desire to create a link between the citizens of the Member States and the European institutions took shape for the first time at the 1974 Paris Summit. It was here that the foundations of European citizenship were laid. Ten years later, at the Fontainebleau European Council in 1984, the Heads of State or Government of the Member States affirmed the need to adopt measures to strengthen and promote the European identity and its image among its citizens and in the world.
Les accords de Schengen en 1985 ouvrent la voie à l’adoption de la citoyenneté européenne instituée par le traité sur l’Union européenne (TUE), signé à Maastricht en 1992. The 1985 Schengen Agreement paved the way for the adoption of European citizenship, which was established by the Treaty on European Union (TEU), signed in Maastricht in 1992.
The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), signed in Lisbon in 2009, gave even more force to European citizenship by establishing the right of citizens’ initiative: a citizens’ committee composed of at least seven nationals from seven different Member States has the possibility to present its European Citizens’ Initiative to the European Commission. This initiative must be supported by one million citizens from seven different Member States.
So far, six initiatives have collected the required number of signatures (“Water, a human right”, “One of us”, “Stop Vivisection”, “Ban Glyphosate”, “Minority SafePack – One million of us sign up for Europe’s diversity” and “End the Cage Age”) and have been submitted to the Commission. The Parliament organised hearings with representatives of the six initiatives, which took place on 17 February 2014, 10 April 2014, 24 April 2015, 20 November 2017, 15 October 2020 and 15 April 2021 respectively. The Commission responded to these initiatives with its legal and policy conclusions. Since the launch of the European Citizens’ Initiative, the Commission has registered a total of 84 initiatives.
European citizenship confers several rights and duties on European citizens
- The right to move, reside, work and study in the territory of other Member States
- The right to vote and to stand as a candidate in municipal and European Parliament elections in the Member State in which they reside, under the same conditions as nationals of that State
- the right to petition and to take a citizens’ initiative
- The right to complain to the European Ombudsman about maladministration by a European institution or body
- Consular protection by the diplomatic authorities of another Member State when the home Member State is not represented in a third country
- The right of access to documents of the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, within the limits of the public or private interest
- The right to contact the EU institutions and obtain a reply in the European language of their choice
EU citizens also have judicial and non-judicial means to defend their rights against the actions of the EU institutions, such as the European Union Tribunal and the European Ombudsman.
The European policy in favour of citizenship has a programme to co-finance associative projects: the programme “Citizens, equality, rights and values”.
Civil society organisations can respond to calls for projects in cooperation with other countries to receive funding for their projects.