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The origins of European

citizenship in the first two
decades of European integration
Espen D.H. Olsen
Published online: 22 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: Espen D.H. Olsen (2008) The origins of European citizenship in the
first two decades of European integration, Journal of European Public Policy, 15:1,
40-57, DOI: 10.1080/13501760701702157
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13501760701702157

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Journal of European Public Policy 15:1 January 2008: 40 57

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The origins of European

citizenship in the first two
decades of European integration
Espen D.H. Olsen

ABSTRACT By tracing conceptions of citizenship in the early period of European

integration until 1971, this article argues that the Maastricht Treaty was not year
zero in the EU citizenship discourse. In contrast to previous research, this article contributes theoretically by studying citizenship as a status of individuals in relation to a
political unit, differentiated analytically into membership, identity, rights and participation, and subsequently focuses on the interplay between them. Further, it contributes empirically by highlighting those treaties, judicial decisions, policies and
practices that affected the status of individuals. The analysis finds that citizenship
elements in early European integration created a frame upon which later
conceptions of citizenship developed, including Union citizenship. It must,
however, not be overstated as anything resembling a status akin to national citizenship. European citizenship should rather be understood as a status emerging from
concrete judicial, legislative and political practices.
KEY WORDS European citizenship; European Court of Justice; European
integration; founding treaties; free movement; rights.

INTRODUCTION
When the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was established in
1951, nobody could have foreseen a European Union (EU) of 27 member
states, with a European Parliament (EP), wide-reaching common policies and
a common currency. Further, they would surely not have been able to anticipate
the intensity of debate over citizenship that emerged after Union citizenship was
institutionalized in the Maastricht Treaty (1992). After all, the dominant understanding has been to link one citizen and one nation-state with one prevailing
national identity (see, e.g., Heater 1999; Schnapper 1998).
Indeed, in one of the first articles that dealt explicitly with the interface concerning citizenship and the European Economic Community (EEC), the French
sociologist Raymond Aron (1974: 653) succinctly stated: [T]here are no such
animals as European citizens. There are only French, German, or Italian citizens. In this reading, owing to the lack of explicit rights of a political character, a
Journal of European Public Policy
ISSN 1350-1763 print; 1466-4429 online # 2008 Taylor & Francis
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DOI: 10.1080/13501760701702157

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E.D.H. Olsen: The origins of European citizenship

41

European citizenship was neither descriptively visible, nor theoretically viable.

In Arons analysis, political rights are seen as unequivocally national in character and separated from other types of rights in their significance for the ethos
of citizenship (Aron 1974: 6423, 651).
Contrary to this, it has been argued from a legal point of view that an incipient
form of European citizenship was visible already in the first treaties and developed
further through subsequent political and legal practices (Evans 1984; Plender
1976; see also Closa 1992). This has been corroborated by studies that have
focused on the institutional construction of citizenship practice from the
1970s onwards (Wiener 1998), on identity issues raised by the relationship
between European institutions and individual citizens (Kostakopoulou 2001),
and the gradual evolution of a European social citizenship (Meehan 1993).
The sceptical stance of Aron has also been opposed by Willem Maas (2005),
who in an article on the genesis of European rights, argues that the study of
European citizenship should focus on understanding and explaining the development of rights as a political struggle even pre-dating European integration. A focus
on rights is further evident in Everson (1995) who emphasizes a legacy of the
market citizen at the core of early European integration as the background for
a normative discussion of what Union citizenship might become.
These studies are all valuable contributions to our understanding of issues
linked to citizenship within European integration. Still, it is puzzling that, for
instance, Wiener does not even consider that citizenship could also have had
an impact before the 1970s. Given the impetus of the ECSC and Rome Treaties
on the institutions and subsequent policies of the European integration project,
one should also consider how they affected the status of individuals. Consequently, in this article the focus is on the period which preceded the launch
of the official European citizenship discourse in the 1970s (see Kostakopoulou
2001: 41). The aim, then, is to ascertain what kind of conceptions of citizenship
were part of the fabric of European integration from the outset.
Although Maas, Everson, Meehan and Kostakopoulou provide some empirical insights on this, what is lacking in this body of work is a more systematic
discussion of citizenship based on a broad theoretical framework encompassing
more dimensions than just (social) rights or identity. Thus, besides stretching
the historical focus back to the founding treaties, the narrow theoretical scope
of these studies is improved upon in this article by studying citizenship as a
status of individuals in relation to a political unit, differentiated analytically
into four dimensions: membership, identity, rights and participation. This
amounts to a more general and dynamic approach as it focuses on the potential
interplay between dimensions rather than on a definition of citizenship as a
priori consisting of ever present attributes. By providing such a theoretical framework, the contribution of the article is to highlight that empirically we need
to ascertain how European integration has activated (or possibly omitted)
dimensions of citizenship. Thus, the article demonstrates that citizenship is a
phenomenon which is not conjured up ex nihilo, but which emerges, evolves
and changes within concrete practices. More specifically, this is done by locating

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Journal of European Public Policy

citizenship within those treaties, legislative measures and practices that are
linked to the status of individuals. In this paper the following instances are analysed: the ECSC and Rome Treaties, jurisprudence from the European Court of
Justice (ECJ) in the 1960s and free movement legislation in the 1960s/1970s.
By highlighting the empirical development of citizenship elements already in
the first two decades of European integration, this article therefore disproves
grandiose theoretical claims such as that of Aron on the impossibility of regarding the concept of citizenship on another level than the nation-state. Tracing the
initial conceptions of European citizenship also provides evidence of how the
Maastricht Treaty should not be seen as year zero in the EU citizenship discourse. In fact, the founding treaties and subsequent practices created distinct
features of European citizenship such as its dependence on prior national citizenship and free movement as a core principle on which later conceptions
clearly developed (see, e.g., Closa 1992). Furthermore, this empirical insight
also poses a challenge to key theoretical and normative suppositions in the
post-Maastricht literature such as the non-viability of citizenship on the supranational level among no-demos theorists (see, e.g., Grimm 1995; Shore 2004) and
the purported separation of nationality and citizenship among post-nationalists
(see, e.g., Curtin 1997; Gerstenberg 2001; Habermas 1996, 1998).
The article will proceed as follows. First, the theoretical framework will be
presented. As citizenship is a contested and normatively laden concept, attention
will be focused on four analytical dimensions that cover different issues raised by
the concept. In defining each dimension, attention will also be directed to how
they work in operational terms providing empirical indicators for the study of
citizenship. Second, in the empirical part of the article, four different instances
in the early period of European integration will be scrutinized to the extent that
they have affected the status of individuals. In doing so, the focus will be on illuminating how dimensions of citizenship were explicitly or implicitly invoked in
each instance and how they were translated into conceptions of citizenship.
Further, with regard to the empirical analysis, the trajectory of the period will
be discussed, with specific attention to similarities and differences between
the instances. Third, in providing concluding remarks, the findings of the analysis will be linked to a brief appraisal of the main strands of the current theoretical
debate on European citizenship.
DEFINING DIMENSIONS OF CITIZENSHIP
On the most general level I will define citizenship as a status of individuals tied to
a political unit. With this in mind, the concept of citizenship involves issues both
of individuality and collectivity (Heater 1999). Citizenship would hold no
meaning if it was devoid of a collective component it is always granted by
some political unit (see, e.g., Walzer 1983). In fact, it is exactly at the interface
relating the individual with a political unit that conceptions of citizenship arise.
Stating that citizenship is a status of individuals does not, however, provide
much in empirical terms. How is it constituted? As Bellamy (2004: 3) has

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43

emphasized, [t]o be recognisable as accounts of citizenship, conceptions must

share certain common . . . conceptual features. I will argue that by breaking citizenship down into membership, identity, rights and participation, specific
aspects of its practical reconciliations are readily observable. The dimensions
should be understood theoretically as complementary facets of citizenship. It
is important here to point out that while each of the dimensions has an analytically independent status, they are also (potentially) interrelated in specific
conceptions of citizenship. This obviously does not rule out that one or more
dimensions can be omitted from such conceptions. It is, for instance, not
given that identity issues figured to any extent within the predominant economic mode of integration in the period covered by this article, but this
should not be precluded theoretically. A dimension has analytical import, therefore, whether it was activated or not as this will either way provide evidence of
the kind of conception of citizenship that was present at a given juncture. Thus,
one should scrutinize the four dimensions as the potential of citizenship rather
than as always consisting of certain attributes linked in a fixed way (see
Kratochwil 1994: 486). How and to what extent the analytically distinct dimensions are empirically related can only be ascertained by analysing actual practices
in which issues of citizenship emerge. The theoretical point here is more
specifically that the traits of one dimension will often have a bearing on other
dimensions in practice. By way of a brief example, the manner in which, say,
membership is defined clearly has an effect on the bestowal and extension of
individual rights. That said, however, one cannot rule out that the way rights
are delineated can also affect the definition of membership not least in circumstances where the notion of membership is not formally settled. Analysing
citizenship from the vantage point of dimensions thus provides the opportunity
to flesh out such linkages in polity-specific conceptions of citizenship.
Turning to definitions, I will argue that the question of membership connects to
the notion of inclusion and exclusion in a political unit (see Brubaker 1992: 212).
Through membership, citizenship ties a human being to some collective organization presupposing a self-understanding of the choosing community (Walzer
1983: 315). This phenomenon is not necessarily only visible in terms of a
formal membership principle such as nationality, but also through more informal,
sometimes identity-oriented criteria (that might not coincide with the formal)
through which citizens and outsiders are distinguished (see Isin 2002: 22).
Thus, in operational terms, membership can be ascertained by identifying who
are seen as members and on what basis they are included. The notion of membership inherent in practical conceptions of citizenship is, then, visible in terms of the
criteria by which members and non-members are differentiated.
Identity signifies that the boundaries between political units established in
terms of membership raise the further question of what constitutes a given community and its more specific differentials from other communities. Identity
thus relates to the questions of who we are and what distinguishes us from
others (Taylor 1985: 34). In operational terms, therefore, identity can be discovered by investigating notions of what draws the community of citizens

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together, the way in which membership is framed in terms of belonging, and

which attributes are used to distinguish between insiders and outsiders.
As a dimension of citizenship, rights can be defined as the entitlements that
derive from this status (Baubock 1994: 233). In simple terms: citizens have an
array of rights that non-citizens do not enjoy. When assessing conceptions of
citizenship, we must investigate the extension of rights, that is, who are given
which rights and how exclusive are they? Are there clear boundaries between
the rights of citizens and non-citizens? And, if so, where is the line drawn?
In addition to these three dimensions, citizenship entails if not the outright
duty, then at least the potential of citizenly participation. Citizenship does not
only have a bearing on how the community relates to the citizen, but also on
how the citizen relates to the community of which he or she is a member
(Carens 2000: 166). In operational terms, participation is therefore visible in
two ways. First, through what I will call the facilitation of voluntary participation. Such facilitation connects to the types of participatory rights that are
linked to citizenship and how the community promotes participation.
Second, it is visible in the specification of duties that derive from the status of
citizenship. See Table 1.

EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND CONCEPTIONS OF

CITIZENSHIP
ECSC Treaty: sectoral integration, embryonic citizenship
The ECSC Treaty signed in Paris (1951) marks the institutional advent of
European integration. Through this Treaty, the Benelux, France, Germany
and Italy sought to create a single market in the sectors of coal and steel
(Dinan 2004: 52). One could thus argue that issues pertaining to individuals
and citizenship were not deemed important for European integration in its
first political and institutional approximation. This is, however, not necessarily
the case if one studies the text of the ECSC Treaty more carefully. Indeed, Maas
Table 1 Dimensions of citizenship and empirical indicators
Dimensions
Membership
Identity
Rights

Participation

Empirical indicators
Criteria for who are seen as members (and hence nonmembers) and on what basis.
What kind of community citizenship is linked to.
Notions of what draws the community of citizens together.
Exclusivity in terms of who are held to have which rights
extension of rights.
Degree of boundary between rights of citizens/non-citizens.
Facilitation of voluntary participation.
Specification of duties linked to the status of citizenship.

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(2005: 985, 997) has shown that arguments over European rights were present
already at the beginning of European integration, and even predated the negotiations on the ECSC Treaty.
Notwithstanding the integration of only six countries in the fields of coal and
steel production, the ECSC Treaty was still comprehensive in its outline of the
historical and political foundations for such a community. It stated aims of the
ECSC such as maintenance of peaceful relations, the establishment of
common bases for economic development, and to raise the standard of
living and . . . furthering the works of peace. Finally, it asserted that the abolishment of historic rivalries was to be countered by creating an economic community, the foundation of a broad and independent community among peoples,
. . . and giving direction to their future common destiny. Obviously, one must
be careful of overstated interpretation regarding lofty considerations in a preamble. Nevertheless, it is interesting that the fields of coal and steel gave rise to
such towering assertions of the rationale behind integration. In fact, as Dinan
(2004: 46) points out, choosing the word community, rather than simply association or organization, connoted common interests that transcended economic
goals. In terms of shedding light on the conception of citizenship within the
Treaty, the crucial question is thus how far it went in its effect on the status
of individuals and more specifically whether this in fact surpassed the
market core of the venture.
Clearly, there was no direct, formal designation of individual membership in the
ECSC Treaty. In fact, there was furthermore no direct reference even to rights of
individuals that could emanate from the Treaty. In spite of that, a notion of individuals and their rights did figure in it. To the extent that individuals were rendered
a status within the framework of the Treaty, it was primarily in the capacity of consumers, workers or producers.1It seems obvious that within the established understandings of citizenship at the time these roles would not be seen as part of
citizenship. To be sure, the aforementioned scepticism of Raymond Aron (1974)
concerning even the conceptual possibility of European citizenship as something
similar to the national counterpart would possibly have rung even more true in
1951. Is Neunreither (1995: 5) then correct in his claim that the ECSC represented
European integration without the citizens? On the contrary, I will argue that some
aspects of the ECSC Treaty did indeed activate issues of citizenship.
The thrust of provisions on individuals in the Treaty is found in Article 69.
This referred to the renouncement of employment restrictions based on nationality for workers in the coal and steel industries. Hence, the assertion of
promoting peace did not foster any direct measures to integrate member state citizens further. There was no notion of a European identity common to citizens of
diverse nation-states concerning what drew individuals together in communal
terms. The Treaty explicitly dealt with the status of individuals in their limited
capacity as potential workers in clearly defined sectors. The basis for individual
membership under the ECSC thus emerged as an effect of other dimensions it
was linked, not to formal membership criteria, but to participation as a prospective individual activity, sectorally defined and circumscribed.

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The rights attached to this status of worker-citizen were further meant to

facilitate what the Treaty referred to as movement of labour. In theoretical
terms, the possibility to move freely across national boundaries constituting
the reach of state jurisdiction and citizenship rights can be interpreted as the
abolition of the disabilities of alienage (Preuss 1998a: 145). Being an alien
a non-citizen is then no longer such a precarious status given that rights
of free movement to some extent trump the states right to deny foreigners
access to its territory. But, given the clearly limited character of movement provisions under the ECSC, this cannot be interpreted as the backbone of a genuine
European citizenship status which cut across national citizenship institutions and
territorial jurisdictions. The free movement provision inherent in Article 69 of
the ECSC Treaty was even stated under the heading movement of labour,2
rather than, say, free movement of persons which would have signified a
more profound curbing of the traditional exclusiveness of states in terms of territorial control on its citizenry.
What this analysis has highlighted is that, concerning the status of individuals, certain narrow issues of citizenship were raised, if not explicitly, certainly
implicitly under the guise of the ECSC. As there was no direct designation of
individual membership under the Treaty, the focal point regarding the status
of individuals was exclusively linked to the participation of workers through
rights of free movement. Hence, already in the ECSC Treaty dimensions of citizenship were dynamically interconnected in generating a thin status of individuals. More concretely, this can be interpreted as an embryonic citizenship and
nothing by way of a more comprehensive conception taking into account different dimensions of citizenship.
The Treaty of Rome: economic integration, market citizenship
Through the Treaty of Rome and the establishment of the European Economic
Community (EEC), the scope of European integration was broadened. The new
Community was designated as economic rather than confined to two sectors as
in the ECSC. In fact, on the back of the failure regarding the European political
community in 1954 (see Griffiths 2000), one of the priorities of that process was
retained: the establishment of a common market in Europe (Dinan 2004: 64).
The more comprehensive scope of integration inherent in the Treaty of
Rome is evident in its preamble. It reiterated the aims to foster peace through
eliminating the barriers which divide Europe, by constantly improving the
living and working conditions of their [the member states] peoples, and
finally to strengthen the safeguards of peace and liberty. Furthermore, what
is striking about the preamble in terms of issues regarding citizenship is the
emphasis on integration, not only between member state citizens as such, but
the determination to establish an ever closer union among European
peoples. This did not bring the individual citizen to the forefront of the aims
of European integration. Yet, the focus on peoples rather than merely states
did signal that the link between the institutions of the integration process and

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47

individuals was not only mediated by the member state level. European integration clearly signified something more than a simple international treaty or
regime. It was perceived to have ramifications for the collectives of individuals
underpinning the member states in terms of community and legitimacy.
It is thus not surprising, notwithstanding the lack of focus on integration
among citizens as such, that issues pertaining to the status of individuals were
scattered throughout the Treaty of Rome. Again, the prevailing image is one
of a focus on individuals as workers and producers.3 Yet, there was some development compared to the ECSC. The Treaty explicitly stated in Article 7 that
any discrimination on the grounds of nationality shall hereby be prohibited,
without specification of the precise circumstances to which this principle
would apply.4 The principle of non-discrimination thus seems to have been
broader at least in terms of the exact wording of the provision than a
narrow focus on the prohibition of such measures exclusively for specific
groups, such as workers. The designation of membership, the criteria for who
were seen as members and on what basis were thus not straightforward. On
the one hand, it is clear that the Treaty established the individual as meaningful
within the framework of European integration in his or her capacity as a worker,
albeit on a general level. Membership was related to participation contingent on
the traversal of political borders in order to work within the common market.
Without the primacy of such work-related participation through marketoriented rights there would be no activated status of individuals under
the EEC. On the other hand, the broad wording of the article on nondiscrimination points to a tension between a conception of the workercitizen and the individual citizen to be protected from discrimination on the
basis of his or her nationality per se.
The thrust of individual rights provisions was linked to the principle of free
movement.5 This was clearly related to the notion of workers as the primary
individual actors in European integration. Yet, it was not a universal principle.
First, the right was bestowed on member state nationals only. Second, free
movement could be curtailed by arguing for reasons of public order and
public safety. When theorizing types of boundaries involved in politymaking in modern Europe, Bartolini (2006: 7 13, 28) has underlined that
the limits surrounding market transactions can be seen as fringes, that is,
rather malleable boundaries subject to ongoing developments of market
relations and practices, while politico-administrative units are delineated by
more settled borders. Thus, the principle regarding free movement of persons
which was to facilitate a common European market through the abolishment
of the fringe boundaries between national markets could cut across the borders
of politico-administrative units previously holding exclusive jurisdiction over
national territory. However, the radical clout of this in theoretical terms was
not emulated in practice. There was no profound challenge to the basic boundaries of states and thus of national citizenship institutions. Ultimate decisions
about citizenship remained national, conceivably because of the persistence of
statehood in the final instance. Further, the potential challenge to the link

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between the individual and the nation-state posed by free movement was clearly
thwarted by the concentration on economic integration and market-making in
the EEC. The range of rights linked to free movement did not entail a deep
intrusion into the political borders of member states.
To conclude, then, the answer to who are the Europeans? in the vocabulary
of the Treaty of Rome was obviously not the democratic citizen as a participant in
a political community, rather the individual-as-worker and market participant.
As Preuss (1998b: 11) points out, [t]he political term citizen was thoroughly
alien to the wording of the original Treaty. There was no notion of a
broader identity which transcended the links generated by market integration,
common institutions and the legal framework on the European level. Still,
the tension regarding non-discrimination possibly points to at least a broadening of the potential effect of European integration on the status of individuals.
Already at the very outset of the integration process, therefore, a dynamic link
between different dimensions is visible primarily by way of an informal determination of individual membership through the corollary of free movement
rights exclusive to member state nationals and participation through work. In
addition, there were some (more inconclusive) elements of a notion of personhood in the Treaty. In the end, however, it is clear that the Treaty of Rome
amounted to a conception of citizenship with heavy emphasis on
participation through work in the common market by the potential crossing
of previously pervasive boundaries of national markets and nation-states.
ECJ jurisprudence: citizenship-as-rights
The jurisprudence of the ECJ is often put forward as one of the main factors in
the development of European integration as a project with state-like features,
but still not a state in its own right (see, e.g., Conant 2002; MacCormick
1999; Weiler 1999). Part of the interest regarding the ECJ in the literature
stems from its so-called seminal decisions in the 1960s which established the
basic principles of supremacy, direct effect and protection of fundamental
rights within the EU order (Weiler 1999: 19 26). These decisions and
especially those on supremacy in Costa 6 and direct effect in Van Gend en
Loos 7 were not brought to court only to adjudicate the status of individuals.
In terms of the subject matter, they focused primarily on specificities of the
common market such as rights of establishment after the exercise of free movement in the former and customs duties in the latter. Yet, in these cases, the ECJ
chose to enunciate principles which reached well beyond the technical minutiae
of the cases as such. It can be argued, therefore, that the principles as such, and
the practices which emanated from these cases, signified the establishment
of a direct link between the EU as a political unit with certain powers and
individual citizens formerly linked only to their nation-states through
citizenship (Preuss 1998a; Weiler 1999).
In Van Gend en Loos, the Court ruled that Community law . . . confer upon
[nationals of member states] rights which become part of their legal heritage. It

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further stated that these were rights which national courts must recognize and
enforce, and emphasized that it has direct effects in the relationship between
Member States and their subjects. In Costa, the emphasis was on the
precedence of Community law. This was affirmed by the declaration that
any European legal norm overrides national legislation in conflict with it (see,
e.g., Weiler 1999: 20 1). Through these judgments, European law thus
circumscribed the exclusive discretion of nation-states in relation to their citizens rights and obligations. In one sense, the judgments can be read as
partial responses to the question of who the Europeans are and what binds
them together in a community. In short, the ECJ answered people with
European rights. This answer, I will argue, highlights that the ECJ provided
elements of a dynamic conception of the status of individuals where rights
through direct effect provided the gist of a thin notion of identity.
What is interesting, furthermore, is the assertion that rights derived from the
European level would have implications on the level of each member state. The
Community created a status which cut across the borders of previously insulated
legal-political systems in terms of membership and the scope of rights. In this
sense, the conception of citizenship was not only linked to the European level
as such, but to two levels European and national. It was not just transnational
in the sense of cutting across national boundaries, but also supranational
through the creation of a direct link between European institutions and individual member state citizens a link that was not present in the founding treaties.
From this discussion, we see that the Court evidently brought issues regarding the status of individuals much more to the fore than was the case in the
founding treaties. The citizen was established as significant per se through
European rights. In this sense, primacy was given to the dimension of rights
in the location of individuals within the system. From the ECJ judgments, it
was further the case, and not surprisingly so, that individuals were given
rights as a consequence of national citizenship. Thus, membership was based
on the national level in terms of formal citizenship, but European rights can
also be interpreted as stipulating a kind of membership as an effect of other activated dimensions. This again illustrates that a dimension such as membership
in addition to formal criteria on the national level was also determined informally through the development of concrete rights that were related to participation in the common market.
One should, however, be somewhat cautious in drawing too far-reaching
conclusions on this. Empirical research regarding the impact of these principles
on the actual use of individual capacities to legal action, for instance, shows that
these have been utilized to a very small extent: There is still today a persistent
cleavage between the theoretical individual rights granted by EU integration
and the rights that private individuals can actually benefit from (Costa
2003: 744). As a result, empirical findings of this sort warn us of inferring
anything close to democratic qualities from legal provisions on individual
rights. Its scope was the private market actor, rather than the public political
participant. In this manner, it did not develop significantly compared to the

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embryonic and market-oriented conceptions of the ECSC and EEC respectively. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that calling attention to the fact that
the Community not only dealt with states, but also with individual citizens,
marked a significant shift insofar as it brought about fundamental questions
regarding sovereignty and autonomy as well as its impact on the bearers of
legitimacy in modern states individual citizens. To summarize, then, the
ECJ brought forward a conception of citizenship-as-rights as part of a
binding legal and political system.
Free movement legislation: citizenship-as-qualified residence
As the analysis of the founding treaties and ECJ jurisprudence have highlighted,
the status of individuals within European integration was primarily linked to
rights for citizens as workers and more specifically to the issue of free movement.
This principle contained the thrust of the idea of economic integration. But, as
has been shown, the exact content and scope of free movement was not entirely
clear in the Treaty of Rome. Subsequently, a series of legislative acts8 towards
the end of the 1960s sought to underpin the principle with policy.
For instance, Regulation 1612/68 was a broad piece of legislation which in
remarkable language underlined the principle of free movement for the idea
and functioning of European integration. Interestingly, it stated in its preamble that freedom of movement constitutes a fundamental right of workers
and their families. The principle was further linked to a guarantee of the possibility of improving his living and working conditions and promoting his social
advancement. In this setting, the status of individuals was thus connected, not
only to their potential participation in the common market, but also to their
basic well-being. Interpreted broadly, the wording of this regulation thus
implies that the individual citizen was to be seen as an end in herself and not
just as a means for the amalgamation of markets.
This was further underlined in Regulation 1251/70 which stated that postwork, citizens had a right based on previous occupation to remain in the territory where they had worked without being national citizens. European citizens were thus granted a kind of membership based on what could be called
qualified residence. What qualified for rights enjoyed under European law
was again participation as workers, albeit increasingly linked to a broader conception of their worth as individuals. This orientation was upheld by the subsequent Regulation 1408/71 which laid down the principles for the
Europeanization of social rights in the wake of free movement of persons.
Here, the aim was to facilitate free movement and mobility in Europe
through the transnationalization of certain social rights and benefits linked
to work and family.
In this sense, even though it was still the worker who was at the forefront of
the relationship between European integration and the individual, a somewhat
broader conception of citizenship slowly evolved. Individuals mattered not only
as participating workers, but also to some extent as citizens who enjoyed certain

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fundamental rights. This is further visible if we focus on the identity-question of

what binds citizens together in a community. Free movement legislation did not
cast this question only in purely technocratic terms. Emphasizing that free
movement was created for individuals as well as collectives for the potential
improvement of the individuals social (and economic) well-being can be
interpreted as an approximation of a European identity beyond the image of
the worker or market actor. This is also evident in the importance granted to
the need for equality of treatment based on ideas of the freedom and
dignity of individual citizens as in Regulation 1612/68.
Obviously, these points cannot be interpreted as laying the ground for any
thick and comprehensive form of identity akin to those based on language, a
common heritage and history or ethnicity. It was rather indicative of a very
thin conception of citizenship centred on the given scope of rights and participation the worker remained at the forefront of the status of individuals.
But, as De Burca (1995: 29) argues, [i]n the face of the apparently overwhelmingly economic impetus of the Community, the language of fundamental
rights offered potential to articulate and establish a place for other values.
Such values were, however, not pronounced inside free movement legislation.
The rights of free movement and market participation dominant in the founding
treaties were retained as basic elements. On this basis, the legislation outlined
some measures which point to a broadening regarding the status of individuals
to include something more than simply their function as workers. This was
primarily connected to a more fundamental status being accorded to rights of
residence and equality of treatment in addition to free movement rights. Thus,
the prior establishment of economic rights affected further rights, elements of
belonging and the designation of significant individuals related to European
institutions. What needs to be investigated further is therefore not only the
extent to which the integration process after its initial phase actually fostered
more concrete conceptions of citizenship rooted in economically circumscribed
rights, but also conceptions geared towards a grounding in notions of political
community, belonging and participation, beyond the private sphere of the
market.
The early period of European integration: what kind of citizenship?
It is clear that issues concerning citizenship throughout the period analysed were
linked primarily to the dynamics of market integration in Europe. Individuals
were first and foremost significant members through their function as workers
as (potential) participants in the common market. Rights were further linked
to this narrow inclusion of individuals contingent on the mode of integration.
In this sense, there was no explicit notion of what European citizens would have
in common of a specific identity which surpassed their function as factors of
production (see Plender 1976: 39). To the little extent that identity issues were
in fact activated, it was as a knock-on effect of changes in the scope of rights and
participation as the primary dimensions of European citizenship established

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Journal of European Public Policy

already in the founding treaties. The emergence of issues linked to citizenship

clearly did not generate conceptions of a thick citizenship on the European
level. Ultimately, citizens were not perceived as directly taking part in a political
project with further collective aims. The collective aim of peace in Europe was
perceived to be attainable through market integration, not by the integration of
citizens politically or culturally.
Nevertheless, there were some differences between the four instances pointing
to a certain trajectory regarding conceptions of citizenship. Not surprisingly, the
conception was broader in the Treaty of Rome than in the ECSC Treaty. One
can impute a more basic market citizenship in the former compared to the
clearly sectoral and embryonic citizenship in the latter. Notwithstanding these
differences in the scope of incipient citizenship politics, on the whole both treaties signified market actors as the primary category of citizens, through the establishment of non-discrimination based on nationality and free movement as core
principles of European integration.
The early case law of the ECJ established that individual citizens had
certain European rights enforceable against the member states. Citizenship
elements of the treaties were mainly implicit. Through the ECJ they were
clearly more pronounced. The domains in which the Court ruled were very
much linked to economic integration its adjudication was in the first
place centred on the functioning of the common market. Yet, it did focus
on the rights of individuals derived from the Treaty of Rome as more than
an international treaty.9 Thus, through a more marked notion of membership
and rights a supranational conception of citizenship emerged, which possibly
created the impetus for later, more pronounced discussions on European identity, culture and citizenship. The membership assertion was furthered in subsequent free movement legislation towards the end of the initial phase
of European integration. Even though the focus was still on the creation of
a common market, these legislative acts also emphasized free movement as
a fundamental right of citizens.
In terms of the time frame, the vocabulary thus shifted from no explicit
mention of individual rights in the treaties, via acknowledgement of the link
between citizens and the Community as a legal-political entity through
certain rights, to the perception of these rights as fundamental for the traversal
of boundaries between markets, if not the settled territorial borders of nationstates. These findings point to an increasing awareness of citizens as individuals
already in the first phase of European integration. Yet, the prevailing
impression remains one where the status of the individual citizen in the
initial phase of European integration was secondary to the aim of integration
between states. The integration of workers and citizens seems mainly to have
been a facilitator for the aim of market integration and peace-building in
Europe. This is further highlighted by the fact there were no duties of participation inherent in these conceptions of citizenship. The emphasis was always
on how the Community as the collective unit could facilitate participation in
a common market. Citizenship in this phase was then not so much a practice

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E.D.H. Olsen: The origins of European citizenship

53

in itself, as a partial, derivative individual status dependent on the emergence of

judicial, legislative and political practices. See Table 2.
The analysis has thus revealed that the image of the citizen was not at the forefront of integration efforts conceptions of citizenship rather developed as the
scope of principles and policies gained practical momentum. Yet, throughout
the period, this piecemeal development was based on two main components.
First, already in the founding treaties, individual European rights were
grounded on prior national citizenship. Second, the principle of free movement
provided the focal point through which other elements of European citizenship
such as social rights and the right of residence gained substance. The additionality of the European status derived from national membership (Closa 1992:
1160) and free movement as the nucleus of European rights (Maas 2005:
998) are both elements that have been pervasive throughout the European integration process. When the concept of citizenship was inserted into the Treaty
framework at Maastricht, they provided the core of Union citizenship.10
Regarding European citizenship post-Maastricht, legal scholarship has further
pointed out that free movement remains at the centre of major developments
mainly through ECJ case law (see, e.g., Castro Oliveira 2002; Mather 2005;
Nic Shuibhne 2002). More specifically, these developments have exposed

Table 2 Conceptions of citizenship in early European integration

ECSC (1951)

Membership: coal and steel workers

Rights: free movement
Participation: work
Identity: not activated
Conception: embryonic citizenship

EEC (1957)

Membership: workers and nationals of member states

Rights: free movement and non-discrimination
Participation: market-based
Identity: not activated
Conception: fundamental market citizenship

ECJ judicial activism

(1960s)

Membership: through rights

Rights: economic and European (direct effect)
Participation: market-based
Identity: thin (direct effect of rights)
Conception: citizenship-as-rights

Free movement
legislation
(1960s 70s)

Membership: residence contingent on participation

through work
Rights: fundamental right of free movement
Participation: work
Identity: thin (equality of treatment and freedom/dignity of
individuals)
Conception: citizenship-as-qualified residence

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knock-on effects on other dimensions such as membership and participation. As

such, these dimensions have to some extent moved away from a market or
worker status towards an increasingly more pronounced notion of personhood
(see Castro Oliveira 2002: 94 101, 126; Nic Shuibhne 2002: 731, 749 51).
Such dynamic effects between dimensions were already visible in the early
period of European integration. Thus, I will argue, the historical tracing of
this article has provided empirical evidence of how the politics of early European
integration provided the frame upon which more pronounced and explicit conceptions of citizenship were later built.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
European citizenship is not a recent invention courtesy of the Maastricht Treaty.
By breaking citizenship into membership, rights, identity and participation,
conceptions of citizenship were already visible in the ECSC and Rome Treaties.
These nascent conceptions were concretized as well as broadened through ECJ
jurisprudence and free movement legislation in the Council. In addition to
acknowledging this as a frame for later conceptions of citizenship, the findings
of this article also provide a starting point for an empirically grounded critique
of the current literature on European citizenship.
Can we interpret the gradual emergence of citizenship issues in the early
period of European integration as a nascent post-national citizenship (see, e.g.,
Curtin 1997; Gerstenberg 2001; Habermas 1996, 1998)? Was it already in
the initial phase of integration pointing towards what Gerstenberg (2001:
312) has deemed [the] promise to release the ideas of citizenship and democracy
from territorial sovereignty and shared nationality? Or, is it rather indicative of
conceiving citizenship in ways which empty it of substantial content of the
means for meaningful political communication among citizens and render
it, in the words of Thaa (2001), as a lean citizenship? If so, does this lend
clout to the no-demos thesis (see, e.g., Grimm 1995; Shore 2004) which
claims that concepts such as citizenship and democracy are empirically unfeasible and normatively undesirable at the supranational level?
This article has illuminated the strong emphasis on the individual citizen in
the founding period of the EU as an actor in private, in a civil society of economic matters, shielded from the public character of a democratic citizen. It was
therefore closer to a lean citizenship in this case a thin, fractional status
within the realm of the market than a genuinely political citizenship. This
is, however, not surprising, given the market impetus of European integration.
No-demos theorists should, however, not celebrate and claim victory
prematurely. What has also been revealed is that different dimensions of
citizenship especially rights and participation through the link to work and
free movement were no longer circumscribed exclusively by the borders of
nation-states. By highlighting that there was a political space wherein a particular
status of individuals had already emerged at the outset of European integration,
this article has therefore shown that issues of citizenship are not incompatible

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55

with institution-building and polity-formation beyond the nation-state. Even

so, in its early conceptions the European status was grounded on national citizenship. The concept of citizenship was thus clearly not released from the corollary
of nationality on the European level as asserted by post-nationalists. I will therefore argue that both no-demos theorists and post-nationalists can learn lessons
from the careful empirical tracing of concrete practices before precluding that
issues of citizenship on the European level are even feasible or asserting the
release of the idea of citizenship from the issue of nationality.
To conclude, this article has shown the fruitfulness of historically and empirically grounded research regarding citizenship within European integration.
Through such an approach, one can avoid the protracted quarrelling between
opponents of theoretical debates and rather illuminate the real influence of
political projects on the status of individuals. In doing so, we also gain insights
that not only have an import for our understanding of European integration and
citizenship in historical terms, but which also relate to the ongoing process of
bringing Europe closer to its citizens, not least in the aftermath of the insertion
of Union citizenship in the Maastricht Treaty.
Biographical note: Espen D.H. Olsen is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department
of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Florence, Italy.
Address for correspondence: Espen D.H. Olsen, European University
Institute, Department of Political and Social Sciences, Badia Fiesolana, Via dei
Rocettini 9, 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI), Italy. email: espen.olsen@eui.eu
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
For their critical and helpful comments on earlier versions the author would like
to thank two anonymous reviewers, Donatella Della Porta, Alun Gibbs, David
McCourt, Friedrich Kratochwil and Caroline de la Porte. An earlier version of
the article was presented at the EUI Colloquium for Problems in World Politics,
Florence, December 2006, and the 12th National Conference of Political
Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim,
January 2007. Participants on both occasions provided critical comments, of
which some are reflected in the article. Needless to say, all mistakes are still
the sole responsibility of the author.
NOTES
1 ECSC Treaty, Articles 3c, 3e, 4b, 46, 56, 69.
2 ECSC Treaty, in the title of Chapter VIII: Wages and Movement of Labor.
3 EEC Treaty (original EEC numbering), Articles 3, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 92,
117, 119, 123, 220.
4 Article 7 further stipulates that the principle of non-discrimination must fall
[w]ithin the field of application of this Treaty and without prejudice to the
special provisions mentioned therein. A narrow interpretation of this could be

56

5
6
7

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10

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that as the Treaty was geared towards economic integration and the facilitation of a
common market, the principle would only apply to individuals as they engaged
within spheres falling under these specific aspects of European integration.
EEC Treaty, Article 48.
Case 6/64 Costa v. ENEL, 1964, ECR 585.
Case C-26/62 Van Gend en Loos v. Nederlandse Adminstratie der Belastingen, 1963,
ECR 1.
Regulation (EEC) No. 1612/68 of the Council of 15 October 1968 on freedom of
movement for workers within the Community, OJ L 257, 19 October 1968; Regulation (EEC) No. 1251/70 of the Commission of 29 June 1970 on the right of
workers to remain in the territory of a member state after having been employed
in that state, OJ L 142, 30 June 1970; Regulation (EEC) No. 1408/71 of the
Council of 14 June 1971 on the application of social security schemes to employed
persons and their families moving within the Community, OJ L 149, 5 July 1971.
See section II.B of C-26/62 Van Gend en Loos v. Nederlandse Adminstratie der Belastingen, 1963, ECR 1.
Treaty on European Union, OJ C 191, 29 July 1992, articles 8 8a.

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Final version received 03/07/07