The morality of freedom

The increasingly multicultural fabric of modern societies has given rise to many new issues and conflicts, as ethnic and national minorities demand recognition and support for their cultural identity. This book presents a new conception of the rights and status of minority cultures. It argues that certain sorts of 'collective rights' for minority cultures are consistent with liberal democratic principles, and that standard liberal objections to recognizing such rights on grounds of individual freedom, social justice, and national unity, can be answered. However, Professor Kymlicka emphasises that no single formula can be applied to all groups and that the needs and aspirations of immigrants are very different from those of indigenous peoples and national minorities. The book discusses issues such as language rights, group representation, religious education, federalism, and secession - issues which are central to understanding multicultural politics, but which have been surprisingly neglected in contemporary liberal theory.

Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights

The chapter looks at categorisations as a form of ‘othering’ in the context of European refugee resettlement. Selection categories in resettlement provide insights into states’ preferences, when given the possibility to effectively select refugees before they present themselves at the border. As such, categorisations in such programmes are ways of othering within the group of ‘others’, excluding but also including according to three logics: humanitarian, security and assimilability. The chapter provides a panoramic view of official selection categories of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), European Member States, and the European Union (EU). The analysis shows that, while resettlement is framed as a humanitarian policy for the ‘most vulnerable’, some European states’ programmes and recent EU propositions indicate that besides a humanitarian logic, security and assimilability logics of ‘othering’ also draw the boundaries of access to this privileged form of refugee protection.

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The 'others' amongst 'them' – selection categories in European resettlement and humanitarian admission programmes

This contribution defends the position that the positive potential of EU citizenship will not be realised unless EU citizenship is endowed with a structural role in the context of EU federalism. The core aspects of citizenship, including the practical application of equality and the functioning of rights are intimately and inescapably connected with the principles behind the drawing of the vertical competences boundary in Europe. Consequently – and possibly counter-intuitively – the key principles underlying the division of competences between the EU and the Member States are nothing else but the core aspects of the citizenship of the Union. This paper critiques the current status quo in EU citizenship law and literature, which tends to ignore this obvious consideration and defends the proposition of turning citizenship into a meaningful federal denominator in Europe, thereby using the framing of the boundary of supranational competences as a tool in the service of EU citizens and the Member States rather than as a justificatory tool for the exclusion of the most vulnerable from protection and the robbing of Europeans of dignity through the deployment of ethically and morally untenable triggers of jurisdiction in what has been called, oxymoronically, ‘the market citizenship’ of the EU. This is, thus, a substantiated plea for a decommodification of personhood in the EU.

On Tiles and Pillars: EU Citizenship as the Federal Denominator

This dissertation includes a comparative study of the nature of mutual recognition in European law within the framework of the European arrest warrant, among others One of the conclusions is that mutual recognition does not mean a judge should blindly implement a ruling made by another Member State After all, people have rights; especially when extradition is requested for minor offenses or in the event of poor prison conditions in the issuing Member State If we hope to improve human and civil rights in Europe, judges should intervene when these rights are in danger of being violated

https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/files/1506545/guid-69d6e1ee-4fcb-4ed6-a988-60011e48377c-ASSET3.0

The nature of mutual recognition in European Law : re-examining the notion from an individual rights perspective with a view to its further development in the criminal justice area

This chapter discusses two questions: what is the relationship between national and EU citizen-ship legally speaking, and what should it be normatively speaking? While often conflated, these questions must be considered independently of each other. It is argued first that EU law is not even capable of justifying the very minimal restrictions CJEU case law has imposed on the au-thority of Member States to determine the rules on the acquisition and loss of national citizen-ship. It certainly cannot justify more far-reaching restrictions such as outlawing investor citizen-ship or allowing UK nationals to retain their EU citizenship. Normatively speaking, however, the case will be made for giving the EU greater influence over the conditions relating to the loss and acquisition of national and EU citizenship, in particular to ensure that third-country nationals with social ties to their society of residence have a credible path to citizenship. 

The relationship between national and EU citizenship: what is it and what should it be?

EU citizenship is not about the centralisation of rights and about replacing the democratically legitimated substance of national laws by uniform European ones Instead, the value of EU citizenship lies in the opportunity it offers to EU citizens to take up residence in another Member State to pursue their dreams and ambitions But while this is so, we should not forget that its value is not uniformly accepted by all Union citizens Neither should we ignore that free movement never was meant to be unlimited

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The Court and the Legislators: Who Should Define the Scope of Free Movement in the EU?

There is a close connection between EU citizenship and rights, both in the law and literature. This article claims that EU lawyers' understanding of EU citizenship and rights suffers from empirical, normative, and conceptual shortcomings. I will point out that there has been insufficient awareness for the boundedness of EU citizenship, the political structure of the EU and the constraints this (realistically) imposes on the ‘meaningfulness’ of EU citizenship. EU citizenship must not be understood as requiring an elaborate set of equal rights for all Union citizens throuzghout the EU, but valued for its ability to allow its status holders to enjoy (almost) full membership in the Member States of which they do not possess nationality.

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EU citizenship and (fundamental) rights: empirical, normative, and conceptual problems

UK nationals will lose their EU citizenship status as a result of the Brexit referendum. To prevent this, several commentators, including the European Parliament Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, proposed to grant associate EU citizenship to UK nationals to safeguard their rights as EU citizens after Brexit. We make the case against associate EU citizenship, dismissing it on three grounds. First, it violates the letter and the spirit of EU law. Second, it violates core EU values, including the EU's promise to respect the constitutional traditions of member states and the values of democracy and the rule of law. Third, it is against EU's interests, as associate EU citizenship fails to respect reciprocity in EU relations with third countries and undermines the coherence of the edifice of EU constitutionalism.

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Against Associate EU Citizenship

The enjoyment of some rights by third-country nationals in the EU is not dependent on the primary beneficiary of rights (be it a person or a company), thereby connecting the third-country nationals with the law of the Union directly, without any proxis. Moreover, in essence some of such rights are remarkably similar to the rights that EU citizens enjoy. Such directly enjoyable quasi-EU citizenship rights and their holders – many a category of third country nationals – constitute the key focus of this contribution, which aspires to walk through all the main statuses of third country nationals in the EU enjoying direct – as opposed to derivative – quasi-citizenship rights in the Union. Concluding such overview three significant interrelated problems with the way how third country nationals are treated in the EU are outlined:1. EU migration regulation assumes the denial of the legal political reality of the Union;2. EU migration regulation bars rationality from being taken into account when third country nationals’ rights are at stake;3. EU migration regulation sends a problematic signal that the goals and principles of the Union can be consistently ignored.We argue that such treatment of the legal-political reality of the European integration project is most unhelpful and has to be changed.

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Martijn van den Brink

Papers

The relationship between national and EU citizenship: what is it and what should it be?

The Court and the Legislators: Who Should Define the Scope of Free Movement in the EU?

EU citizenship and (fundamental) rights: empirical, normative, and conceptual problems

Against Associate EU Citizenship

Pretending There is No Union: Non-Derivative Quasi-Citizenship Rights of Third-Country Nationals in the EU