Third-Country Nationals and the Boundaries of EU Citizenship

In the present times of global interdependency and unprecedented trans-border mobility, more and more people live outside their home states – a situation which accentuates the problem of a so-called citizen tyranny: Although subject to the law of their host state, these resident non-citizens have no say in its making. A potentially effective solution to this problem is provided by Union citizenship. Despite the justified criticisms pointing mainly at the limited material scope of EU citizenship, this paper highlights its evolutionary character which explicitly allows for a future extension of the rights it currently entails. Moreover, it will be argued that Union citizenship not only strengthens the legal protections of intra-European migrants but also renders these protections more robust by granting all European citizens – via their participation in European decision-making – influence upon the rights they enjoy in another member state. Nevertheless, because of the strict linkage between EU citizenship and the nationality of a member state, its beneficial effects are limited to European migrants, thus excluding all non-European immigrants from their scope. And even if the introduction of Directive 2003/109/EC extended some of the social and civil rights of Union citizenship to long-term Third-Country Nationals (TCNs), the latter remain in a fundamentally precarious situation: In the absence of equal voting rights, all the rights granted to them remain at the disposition of their host polity and can hence easily be withdrawn when the political or economic climate changes. In order to overcome the precarious legal position of TCNs, three reforms will be discussed: A disaggregation of the components of Union citizenship allowing TCNs to acquire its rights without obtaining the corresponding political status; a liberalization of European nationality laws and a decoupling of Union citizenship from the nationality of a member state.