Citizenship and Supranationality in the European Union

Abstract

This article analyses the citizenship of the European Union through its primary documental sources and theoretical contributions to understand this legal and political concept in the European Union Law. This research contributes to the studies on European citizenship in the field of law and political theory, considering that this is a hybrid concept (both legal and political). This article conducts a comparative study, trying to distinguish the difference between the European citizenship and the traditional conception of citizenship, which is based exclusively on the nation-State idea. The text is divided into two parts. The first one studies the historical and political context of regional integration and politics of coordination in the post-war era. The second one analyses European citizenship’s legal contents and its meanings in terms of political theory, based mainly on Patricia Mindus. In general terms, the article presents the evolution of the conception of European citizenship, trying to explain two main ideas: how the Europe of workers became the Europe of citizens and how the European citizenship realized, in the beginning, the concept of negative liberty and, recently, the notion of positive liberty, enriching the political experience of participative democracy in the European community.