Gan Hui Zhen | JD Candidate, Columbia Law School 2018 When the EU Member States introduced EU Citizenship into the 1993 Maastricht Treaty, they arguably did not foresee that this would open up the Pandora’s box that eventually led to the creation of “welfare tourism.” After all, EU Citizenship as originally conceived only granted a small range of civil and political rights – most significantly, the right to vote, and the right to stand as candidate in elections to the European Parliament, as embodied in Article 20, Section 2(a) TFEU. However, EU Citizenship underwent a radical expansion, enabled by the […]
Citizenship
2 posts
Angelo Tannuzzo J.D. Candidate, Columbia Law School, 2017 Citizenship status determines the rights and obligations that exist between citizen and State. For example, a citizen must pay taxes, but also has the right to vote and enjoy government-maintained infrastructure and services. Citizenship also entails a mutual duty of loyalty: the State is to act in the collective interest of its citizenry, while a citizen owes allegiance to the State. Because the citizenry and the State form an interdependent political and social entity, the mechanism and selection process by which the State confers or withholds citizenship directly influences the composition, […]