Rights of the European Citizen
Rights of the European Citizen

Summary/Abstract: The citizen concerned is the citizen of European Union countries, the number of which is at present 15. A remark should be made before a detailed analysis of the rights the residents of this Union enjoy. The concept of European citizenship is not a legal concept, in other words there are no specific modalities of acquiring and losing it as in the case of citizenship of any other country. Any individual who has the nationality of at least a country member of the Union is a European citizen. Therefore, there is no double nationality as in the case of federal States because the Union is not - or it is not yet - a federal structure. Consequently, the concept of European citizenship is rather a political concept, the content of which tends to be extended as the European construction is furthered. In this sense the most radical measures have been introduced by the Maastricht Treaty, even if most of them do not have direct applicability and require concrete provisions from the part of the Union institutions.

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