The Future of European Citizenship

The European Union (EU) is a unique economic and political partnership between 28 different countries. It consists of about half a billion citizens, and its combined economy represents about 20 percent of the world’s total economy (Briney, 2015). Today The European Union works as a single market, with free movement of people, goods and services from one country to another. There is a standard system of laws to be followed, and since 1999 many countries share a single currency called the Euro (Europa.eu, 2015). This essay will explore the background history of the European Union and the benefits and drawbacks of the European Union.

Since 1950 European Union (EU) was created it has promoted peace, prosperity and values among the member nations and its neighbouring countries. EU’s influential tools, has helped transform many European states into functioning democracies and prosperous countries. EU’s membership has grown from 6 to 28 countries (Enlargement, 2014), satisfying a historic vow to integrate the continent bringing in most states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by peaceful ideals.EU has anticipated the enlargement as an extraordinary opportunity to endorse political strength and economic success in Europe. EU’s extension policy is open to any European state that fulfils the EU’s political and financial criteria for membership; still the political process of inclusion of new state requires a unanimous agreement from all the existing 28 member states. Europe is considered to be more flourishing and safer place due to the promotion of democracy, anti-corruption policy and the single market policy.

The European Union is now taking over Europe! The European Union is the way to keep most countries on each other's side. The European Union started after Europe was destroyed after two world wars. Six countries decided to work together and create a union. Now, the European Union consists of 28 countries, (64% of Europe) and has many candidates who are financially stable. The European Union has divided Europe in culture and politics.

When the EU takes on more countries, the differences between the nations and the people in them become more expansive. WIth more cultures and countries to work with, cooperation between the EU becomes difficult. This can be easily shown in the quote, “With all this unifying going on, one of the more delicate issues facing the new Europe is how to create a common foundation without carpeting over the continent’s rich tapestry of peoples, languages, cuisines, and cultures (Doc F).” The EU is struggling with uniting the EU as a whole, while maintaining the properties of that country that make it so unique. This can be a problem in keeping the identity of these countries. Another piece of evidence is the quote “European culture is a bouquet de fleurs,’[bouquet of flowers]...’Together they are beautiful. But the rose is still a rose, and the tulip is a tulip. This must be preserved (Doc F).” Herr Eisenhauer meant by the quote, that Europe is beautiful together, but each country must maintain its own

Indeed, the ideological foundations that gave birth to the EU were based on ensuring development and maintaining international stability, i.e., the containment of communist expansion in post World War II Europe (Hunt 1989). The Maastricht Treaty which gave birth to the EU in 1992 included considerations for joint policies in regard to military defense and citizenship.

Europe now, for the first time in modern history, is a partnership sharing common values and a commitment to harmony and cooperation. The dream of European integration, shared by the United States, is now being realized, leaving behind us the wasteful era of wars, hostility, and inequalities. We are on the road to a Europe enjoying a unity and

If both benefit the most in cooperating, as is the case in the prisoner’s dilemma, they will both cooperate, and peace will be maintained . This basic liberal assumption of the importance of individual gains is the main support for European integration. If all states cooperate in all arenas, leading to a collectively sovereign “Europe”, the individual gains of each state will be adequate enough to avoid conflict among themselves making it easier to approach the rest of the international system together peacefully.

The European union is an integrated system featuring some if not most of the countries in Europe. It is an economic and political agreement between the European member states that binds countries together through treaties, which have been signed by every country in the union. It was established back in the 1950s but, back then it only featured 19 countries in comparison to now when it features 28.

The union citizenship is an empowering trait of the EU and it grants its citizens equal rights, treatment and protection. Citizens who wish to work and reside in another member state of the union are not only protected by the union citizenship but also from the free movement of persons, a fundamental freedom of the EU.

The right to citizenship is one of the fundamental human rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This declaration was signed by all EU Member States and supposed to eliminate the stateless individual as a counterpart to the “national” (Icelandic Human Rights centre). In fact, statelessness nowadays affects more than 600,000 people in Europe and still remains a hidden phenomenon with

Dual citizenship is a citizen who has able to hold more than one whole countries’ membership, including fulfills obligations, visits to countries at any time and enforces the rights from the countries (Goodman, 2014). Accepting dual citizenship or not has been considerable controversy in a lot of countries. Dual citizenship helps promote flexible and keep in good touch with other countries, but nowadays dual citizens more and more reduce their nationalism which influences the development of countries and the inheritance of history and cultures.

Within my assignment I will be dealing with citizenship, concepts of societal inclusion and exclusion. I will define citizenship as a person who is legally recognised by a state under the law. However, Bryan Turner (1993:2) best defines citizenship “as that set of practices (juridical, political, economic and cultural) which defines a person as a competent member of a society and which is a consequence shape the flow of resources to persons and social groups”. Citizenship is also a status that entitles an individual to certain rights, privileges and benefits granted by the state.

The European Union has many unique feature. It is the unification of European countries in a way that establishes a bond in such a unique way that it is the only one of its kind. The European Union was formed in the 1950s at the end of the Second World War. This was to help prevent another disastrous war from occurring because if the nations of Europe were all allies, then they would have no reason to go to war with each other. The European Union was created because it was a way try to insure world peace and both economic and political tranquility in Europe. This is understandable, after battling two world wars on European soil in less than 30 years, it was logical that a Type of unification would take place to try to dissolve the idea of

The Maastricht Treaty was a complex 1993 agreement that transformed the European Economic Community into the European Union so as to increase political and economic cooperation in Europe. Political objectives were given far greater consideration in the agreement than in any preceding agreement among the member states. Goals included improving the democratic legitimacy and efficacy of insitutions, furthering the economic and monetary union of states, and facilitating the development of a common foreign and security policy as well as broadening the social sphere of the existing European Community. The first pillar of the agreement established the European Community and Parliament,

People have created unions many times but not all of them were successful, specifically when we consider alliances among number of countries with different economics, political systems and culture. For instance, last century brought both the biggest collapse and the most promising union in the modern history. Although U.S.S.R has disappeared from geographical maps, some of its members joined another alliance. The European Union (EU) is an economic and political partnership that united 28 countries on the European part of Eurasia and represents a unique form of cooperation among members today.