A Quest for a Non-Accessory European Citizenship: Revising Article 20 Tfeu for the Sake of Social Inclusion

European citizens stand at the top of a hierarchy of legal residents in the EU while third country nationals with no connection to EU citizens are to be found at the bottom. Following Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the only vehicle to European citizenship lies on having the nationality of a Member State. This means that there is a large number of residents in the EU, those who do not hold an EU nationality, that are side-lined and fall outside the scope of protection of the EU which often results in being socially excluded. To a great extent, European citizenship broke the dichotomy between foreigners and nationals, yet the discussion on social exclusion remains with regard to third country nationals and stateless individuals. This discussion has become even a hotter topic in relation to Brexit and the large number of Brits who will lose their EU citizenship status. This paper aims at looking into social exclusion caused by lacking European citizenship to bring to the table the discussion on non-accessory European citizenship by showing that the nationality based citizenship is ill-suited to pursue inclusiveness and a more unified EU. To this end, this contribution looks into a number of cases before the Court of Justice of the EU that deal with citizenship, especially those who have applied the genuine enjoyment test which has reopened the question of who may and who may not be excluded from the rights attached to European citizenship.