The European Parliament and the Construction of the European Citizen

The European Parliament has a unique relationship with the European citizen. From its very beginnings, the EP laid claim to the idea of the European citizen, and used it as the foundation and legitimation of its actions. Indeed, the legitimacy of the EP and the EU more broadly to no small degree depends on the EP’s claim to representing the European citizen, and the latter's participation in European elections. The EP is unique in this regard, as no other EU institution is so existentially dependent on the European citizen, as differentiated from the national citizen on whose political representation Member State governments in the Council are based. Even the Commission, though it occasionally employs the language of European citizenship, does not need it to justify its own activities as European executive. Yet, the existence of a European citizen is not a given. Lots of research has already looked into the legal and normative aspects of European citizenship, but so far little attention was given to what the EP did to legally and discursively construct the European citizen it claims to represent. This study aims to fill that gap and to assess the EP’s historical role as transnational ‘citizen-building’ actor. With that goal in mind, it presents a narrative reconstruction of the role of the EP in the process leading up to the inclusion of EU citizenship in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, taking a long-term approach that goes back to the 1975 Tindemans Report and the pronounced ambition to build a "citizens’ Europe".