Projecting a New-EU Citizenship Regime for European Republicanism

In the 2010s, the supranational European project has faced a series of backlashes from the reactionary movements. The rise of radical right and left parties in national elections; increased presence of Eurosceptic parties in the European Parliament; thousands of new generation of immigrant families turning towards radical Islamic movements have challenged the notions of European unity and solidarity. But what is the common cause of all these sentiments? Are they, as some argue, the symptoms of the still recovering European economy from the almost a decade long financial crisis? Are they rooted in the failure of the EU and European states of creating an encompassing European identity to cohabitate non-Christian, non-Westerns millions of migrants with the deeply embedded cultural and national identities in Europe? Or is there something more transcending as a result of rapidly changing working and social conditions along with globalization? The answer is probably somewhere in between. Yet, regardless the source of the problem, the symptoms are there and they are threatening the unity of the European Union and the peace in Europe severest ever since the end of the Cold War. Reaching to its peak with Brexit, nationalist rhetoric towards the European Union has gained momentum in almost every European country and for the first time ever, since the initiation of the EU project, even the most pro-European voices have become reluctant on further integration. So the question is, what should the EU and European countries do to overcome the challenge of this reactionary movement? As a response, this paper projects a new form of EU citizenship separate from Member State citizenship and an additional citizenship to national citizenships, which is granted and governed at the community level and discusses its implications for the European republicanism. The member states have been insofar tenacious in securing the citizenship as a prerogative of member states, and object any delegation of power to the supranational level. In this paper, I argue that the proposed form of supranational citizenship upholds not only a viable solution to many democratic, social and institutional shortcomings of the derivative form of the EU citizenship, but also mitigates the challenges of globalization imposing on the mobile, transnational and cosmopolitan citizens and on the welfare systems of nation states. This form of citizenship will open up the possibility of owning multiple citizenships, both national and supranational, which are not necessarily conflicting with each other and gives the possibility of a new form of a social contract between citizens and Member states, as well as citizens and supranational polity. By elaborating the institutional, legal and political dimensions of the proposed scheme; the paper discusses the potential implications of the ‘new EU citizenship’ not only on the reciprocal relationship between European citizens and the EU but also on the larger dimensions of the European republicanism.