L’Autore si interroga sulla incidenza della creazione di una moneta unica sulla formazione della cittadinanza europea. Premesso che la dimensione transnazionale di tale cittadinanza (che investe il cittadino di uno Stato membro quale residente in un altro) va distinta dalla dimensione sovranazionale (che investe il rapporto fra i cittadini e i pubblici poteri dell’Unione), egli ritiene che l’euro riguardi soprattutto la seconda dimensione, e che esso segni la punta più alta della contraddizione fra il successo del mercato europeo (a fronte della divisione in mercati nazionali) e il fallimento dell’Unione quale forma di convivenza politica organizzata. La ragione consisterebbe essenzialmente nella visione di corto respiro e irresponsabile delle classi politiche nazionali, interessate a mantenere l’immagine di una burocrazia o tecnocrazia europea in modo da continuare a lucrare consenso senza assumere responsabilità.
European single currency, citizenship and constitutional developments[*]
di Cesare Pinelli
Our seminar’s general topic poses diverse kinds of questions. We might first ask ourselves whether euro, being an instrument of economic exchange, is likely to concur to the creation of European citizenship, whose decisive conditions have rather to do with politics. Such question requires an approach grounded on political philosophy.
Irrespective of such approach, we might then inquire into to what extent the euro, having been adopted since ten years as single currency from the majority of the EU Member States, has affected the representations of European citizenship. In such case, the euro is taken as a symbol, and perhaps the most powerful symbol, of the EU, and the question is sociological, concerning the identity of the European citizen.
However, the fact that the euro has been adopted as the EU’s single currency might raise the further question of whether it has succeeded on economic and financial grounds, and, if this is so, of the political and social consequences of this success. Economists should be in the front-rank for answering such question.
Finally, we might deal with the topic moving from the fact that, according to the EEC Treaty, the status of European citizen is automatically acquired from citizens of the EU member States and that it consists of the rights and duties provided in that Treaty. In this perspective, which is clearly legal, the connection between the single currency and European citizenship is far less evident than in the previous cases. But this is not to say that it doesn’t exist. Its existence depends rather on the approach followed by legal scholars while reconstructing the notion of European citizenship. According to a formal approach, no relevance should be given to the establishment of the single currency for the aim of such reconstruction, given the absence in the European treaties of some connection of that sort. The result does change, if we consider the treaty’s provisions concerning European citizenship as the basis of a process aimed at progressively defining the main features of such notion. In that case, the single currency is likely to be included among the components of that process.
Legal discourses on European citizenship are therefore capable of including within their analysis the issue of the single currency to the extent that they leave aside the pretention of exhausting the definition of European citizenship in formal terms, that is, by exclusively relying on the Treaty’s provisions. A preliminary choice is therefore needed at this respect.
It is time to recall that, according to Article 20 of the Treaty of Lisbon (not entered into force yet, and reproducing the still in force art. 17 of the TEC),
“1. Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional and not replace national citizenship.
2. Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights and subjected to the duties provided for in the Treaties. They shall have, inter alia:
a) the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States;
b) the right to vote and to stand as candidates in elections in the European Parliament and in municipal elections in their Member States of residence, under the same conditions as nationals of that State;
c) the right to enjoy, in the territory of a third country in which the Member State of which they are nationals is not represented, the protection of the diplomatic and consular authorities of any Member State on the same conditions of the nationals of that State;
d) the right to petition the European Parliament, to apply to the European Ombudsman, and to address the institutions and advisory bodies of the Union in any of the Treaty languages and to obtain a reply in the same language.
* Report at the Seminar organized by Fondaca-Scuola Superiore S.Anna di Pisa, “The Single Currency and European Citizenship. An Assessment“, Pisa, June 3rd 2009.↵
These rights shall be exercised in accordance with the conditions and limits defined by the Treaties and by the measures adopted thereunder”.
Most legal scholars, however, believe that, while reconstructing the notion of European citizenship, further elements need to be taken into account, namely the judicial developments following the Maastricht Treaty’s enactement, and the fact that the features of that citizenship are inextricably connected with a legal order which is itself far from being fairly stabilized.
In this perspective, European citizenship is conceived as part of a wider process of progressive definition of the EU’s identity, rather than as a clearly defined legal notion. This gets the legal approach closer to the sociological, although the former, contrary to the latter, is bound by the before mentioned constraints, which in the meantime afford at least a general structure of the discourse. While adopting a legal approach, even the function of the single currency in the construction of European citizenship needs then to be investigated in light of these elements.
An analysis of the Treaty provisions, of the further developments due to the European Court of Justice, and of the attempts of the EU’s constitutionalization occurring, with different words, since the 2001 Laeken Declaration, drives to the assumption that the European citizenship is characterized by two distinguished dimensions, namely the transnational and the supranational. While the former corresponds to the bundle of rights of the citizen of a EU Member State moving or resident in another EU Member State, the latter corresponds to that citizen’s rights with respect to the EU institutions[1].
The transnational dimension is older and far more consolidated than the supranational, going back to the very foundation of the EEC as grounded on freedom of movement of persons, goods, services and capital, and particularly to the ECJ’s recognition of the EEC Member State’s worker’s rights irrespective of its residence in a certain Member State.
That jurisprudence was encapsulated in Article 17 of the TEC. While stating that citizens of the Union shall have “a) the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the member States”, the Maastricht Treaty labeled under the wording “citizen” the bundle of rights which the ECJ had already deemed inherent to the status of the citizen of a certain Member State working in another Member State. On the other hand, Art. 17, lett. a) of the TEC paved the way to a further development of the ECJ’s jurisprudence. Departing from the need of combining the right to free movement with the equal treatment principle, the ECJ helds that free movement is a fundamental right that does not need to be justified. It is rather for the Member State to justify any restriction to such right as reasonable and proportionate. This reversal of the burden of proof puts the citizen on the move in a much stronger position vis-à-vis national administrations. The cases relate to the need to reconcile free movement of citizens with policies such as access to education, social benefits, taxation, which are highly sensitive and close to national sovereignty.
The Treaty and the way it is being implemented by the ECJ is also bringing about more recognition of citizens as citizens rather than as different categories of the population or professions. Following the lead taken by the Court, EU legislation on free movement and residence – the “European citizenship” directive (2004/38) – collects 9 separate legal texts for different categories. Similarly, new legislation on the recognition of professional qualifications brings together 15 previous texts for separate professions. At any rate, the expansion of the transnational dimension of the European citizenship is still led by the ECJ. Legislative acts follow, and tend rather to rationalize, previous judicial holdings.
The supranational dimension of European citizenship appears more fragile and problematic than the transnational. Its legal origin lies of course in Art. 17 of the TEC, but the only rights herein recognized corresponding to the supranational dimension are “d) the right to petition the European Parliament, to apply to the European Ombudsman, and to address the institutions and advisory bodies of the Union in any of the Treaty languages and to obtain a reply in the same language”. A thin list, if not insignificant, certainly not comparable with the flourishing recognition of the European citizen’s rights grounded on freedom of movement. Nonetheless, the Treaty provisions are far from exhausting the rights which are likely to be connected with the supranational dimension of European citizenship. The 2000 Charter of fundamental rights of European citizens, although not entered into force yet, has become a crucial point of reference for these rights, mainly due to the case-law of national courts. On the other hand, European courts have hugely expanded their own jurisdiction over rights falling outside the traditional sphere of the European market.
Hence derives the widely held opinion that European citizens rights, both in the transnational and in the supranational dimension, are meeting sufficient judicial protection, and that the issue at stake at this respect is rather the overlapping among national and European Courts, including the European Court of Human Rights. Apart from this inconvenience, the degree of protection of citizens rights at the European scale is believed to have gradually reached that ensured at the national. But this doesn’t lead to the conclusion that the process of creating an European citizenship has come to an end. To the contrary, in spite of the increasing judicial protection of citizens rights occurred in the last decade, the European citizenship remains a difficult objective to achieve.
Where lies the source of this difficulty? Why, confronted with the national, European citizenship still appears a pale figure? Attention needs to be drawn to the persistent asymmetry between the enormous impact of the EU’s decisions on citizens lives and expectations on the one hand, and the representation of politics, which is still largely positioned within the borders of each Member State. Such asymmetry’s persistence is due to the interest of national governments and political parties in leaving on the EU the burden of solving problems which appear politically intractable at the national scale, thus threatening their own electoral consent. The fact that the European political decision-making depends largely on the action of national governments and representatives is therefore accurately hidden behind the image of the EU as a bureaucratic or technical entity, detached both from popular feelings and from political passion, which characterized it since the beginning. This result is achieved both through the sophisticated devices characterizing the EU institutional system, including the unanimity rule affecting the Council’s decisions, and through the resistence of parties to transform the EP’s elections into a competition among different political visions of EU’s policies, through the designation of a candidate to the Presidency of the Commission, and the presentation of a corresponding program, from the main European political families represented at the Strasbourg Assembly. Hence derives the fallacious impression of politics as a national activity steadily connected with the interests and passions of citizens, which media corroborate while depicting an EU standing against the background of a blue sky, remote from the earth of citizens lives and expectations.
The single currency issue is an important piece of the picture. Apart from its impact on the transnational dimension of citizenship, consisting in the facility of monetary exchanges within the Eurozone, for what concerns the supranational dimension the single currency created a parallel asymmetry. The single currency immediately acquired a crucial role for the single market’s development, and, contrary to some expectations, a positive impact on the certainty of market’s exchanges. It might also be inferred that, without the single currency, the 2008 global financial crisis would have brought to collapse the economy of the Eurozone’s Member States. Moreover, the euro’s performance in the crisis is likely to change the position of some of the States which have not adhered to it, although provided with the necessary financial requirements.
The institution of the single currency, and of an independent central bank aimed at granting financial stability, has thus proved to be a necessary condition for the sake of the European economy. However, it has also appeared insufficient for its flourishing. This depends inter alia on the absence of an institutional counterpart of the ECB, corresponding to the Finance minister at the EU level, which the informal gathering of the Eurozone’s Finance ministers into the so called Eurogroup appears unable to supply. For such purposes, the Eurogroup’s Member States should renounce to a significant part of their own competences in national political economy. But they are far from accepting such limitation, which would weaken their power over issues decisively affecting the relationship with their respective electorate, including taxes. At this respect, Member States are not ready to go beyond low forms of intergovernmental coordination, such as that provided in the 2000 Lisbon Strategy. Why, contrary to the Maastricht standards, aimed at granting financial stability within each State of the eurozone, and therefore strictly connected with the ECB’s task, the Lisbon standards, aimed at enhancing economic growth, failed in most cases to be achieved? The answer is to be founded in the respective institutional assessments. While the evaluation of the respect of the former standards, and the correspondent sanctioning, was centralized before the European Commission, the latter, beyond the rhetoric surrounding the “open method of coordination”, remained in the hands of national governments. A trade-off emerged thus in the last decade between the welfare of European citizens and the national organization of politics.
Such trade-off is unknown to citizens not less than the single currency’s success-story, and for the same reason. Even a minimal information on such issues runs counter politicians’ interests, and has no appeal for the media. Unsurprisingly, citizens tend to perceive the euro as the most powerful symbol of an European technocracy wholly detached from their own interests. Nor is a casualty that, once submitted to referendum in Denmark (2000) and in Sweden (2003), the adhesion to the single currency didn’t achieve the majority of voters, the popular support for the national currency, viewed as a symbol of national identity, being stronger than economic considerations.
Let us look, in turn, at the élites attitude. After the rejection of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe at the French and Dutch referendum, no reference to the symbols of the Union, including the euro, was made in the Treaty draft which was approved in Lisbon, as if the élites were now shamed of the neurotic quest for a European identity which affected the constitutional treaty.
Nevertheless, the single currency is the most powerful landmark of supranational integration, and corresponds to its point of no-return, being inextricably connected with the single market. Unless caught by a cupio dissolvi, no member of the Eurozone would abandon the single currency. The “paradox of the euro”, that is, the contradiction between the good performance and the scarce popular support of the single currency[2], ultimately reflects the same gap between reality and representation affecting the EU at large. Once again, we are confronted here with the lip-service characterizing the Member States attitude towards the EU. It is this attitude which inevitably biases European citizenship, rendering artificial the claim of an ‘European identity’. The vicious circle currently affecting the EU-Member States relationship is likely to be reversed either on the pressure of an external threat, or because of the emergence, particularly among younger generations, of a public opinion seeking a fresh approach to the European enterprise. At this respect, a longstanding commitment would of course be required from groups, associations and networks, founded both on the delivery of informations about the present, and on a thorough comprehension of the challenges which a democratic supranational organization as the EU is expected to meet in the years to come.
Note
1. On this see C.Pinelli, Cittadinanza europea, in Enciclopedia del diritto. Annali I, Giuffrè, Milano, 2005, 185-186.↑
2. L. Bini Smaghi, Il paradosso dell’euro, Rizzoli, Milano, 2008.↑