Migration and the Multilevel Governance of Citizenship in the European Union

Citizenship policy is an important way for governments to influence migration. This paper investigates the ways in which European Union institutions attempt to influence national citizenship regimes, which are the gateway to freedom of movement within the EU. International law, as is well-known, reserves to states the prerogative to determine the policies and procedures relating to acquisition and loss of citizenship. The Court of Justice of the European Communities accordingly noted in its Rottman decision that, with “nationality, the State defines its people. What is at stake, through the nationality relationship, is the formation of a national body politic, and it goes without saying that a Member State is free to define the limits of that body politic by determining the persons whom it considers to be its nationals.” Yet in that and subsequent decisions, the CJEU has also decided that “Member States must, when exercising their powers in the sphere of nationality, have due regard to European Union law.”  The European Commission, meanwhile, concludes that “granting Member State citizenship also means granting EU citizenship and the strong rights attached to this status. As a consequence, naturalisation decisions taken by one Member State are not neutral with regard to other Member States and to the EU as a whole. This paper investigates the effects of this rhetoric by the European Court and Commission and situates it within a wider theoretical framework on the multilevel governance of citizenship.