The Europeanization of citizenship: National and Union citizenships as complementary affiliations in a multi-level polity

[From the introduction]. The paper will focus on this relativisation of national citizenship in favour of a common status for all nationals of the Member States.8 It will be argued that the relativisation of national citizenship is not originally due to Union citizenship, but constitutes a process9 which can be traced back to the beginnings of European integration (I.1.). However, only the concept of Union citizenship can be said to conceptually capture the reality of a continuously deepening equality of treatment between nationals and EU non-nationals; at the same time, the introduction of Union citizenship has added momentum to this convergence. Far-reaching though this development may be, the following analysis will reveal its limits, too (I.2.). It leads to the conclusion that, in the multilevel polity that is today’s EU, national and Union citizenship need to be conceptualised as complementary affiliations (II.)