Review of the article: "To be a European citizen, Eros and civilization" (J. Weiler)

In the history of political systems, democratic citizenship has been expressed and developed in the nation state and its regional and local subdivisions. The principles of citizenship in transnational level are not yet well established. The concept of "cosmopolitan" citizenship is still a vague philosophical vision. The exercise of citizenship in a transnational entity, or an inter-governmental organization like the European Union represents a new phase of the interpretation of the basic concepts of political theory.

Joseph Weiler rightly emphasizes the challenge that the enlargement of the scope of the concept of citizenship poses to European political and legal thought. It is the traditional classical vocabulary of citizenship and represents the vocabulary of the State of the Nation and the People.

It is difficult to dissociate, because it transcends the borders of the state, and constitutional law-based state. It leads to the establishment of a European citizenship that clearly revolutionized the contemporary theory of constitutional law and understanding of civil and political rights in Europe.

The European Union now offers an interesting example of political paradox: that of being a political structure in the process of expansion, a community of citizens with specific rights and duties codified in the successive treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice, but a community whose identity is still uncertain and whose institutional or political project is far from unanimous.

Despite this uncertainty founder, the European Union in February 1992 with members of a "European citizenship", this aims to strengthen the political dimension of a democratic and European Economic and Monetary much earlier.

This paradox is widely put into perspective by the author, who seeks, in the first part of the text to highlight the various problems posed by the development of European citizenship. In the second part, it will see that Weiler provides an outline of proposals to overcome the lack of legitimacy of that citizenship.

The usual tensions between national and multicultural awareness are particularly visible on a transnational scale and those of the European Union (EU) are particularly well developed. These tensions are necessarily re-emerged with the debates around the question of European citizenship, an issue introduced by the Maastricht Treaty.

Indeed, being a member of the EU that its citizens were induced, therefore, also European citizenship. Tensions around the notion of European citizenship were so vivid that the Treaty of Amsterdam changed the very definition of European citizenship by explaining that it should be seen as a complement to national citizenship and does not replace it if it.

The author states as well, in the introduction, the object of his remarks, and tries to give some explanation for the anxiety raised by the introduction of European citizenship. It shows that there are different views about this new form of citizenship that are not necessarily contradictory, and that one is just like the other, they induce different policies; they bring not only to European integration, but also to its implementation. The full article will respect, then, this line of thinking, based on an articulation of the relationship between thinking style rather than in favor of sovereignty and citizenship-type community.

Tags: Joseph Weiler; author; review of the document by Weiler; development of European citizenship;