The historical overview of the European Union’s common citizenship policy demonstrates that the notion of union citizenship has followed the developmental arc of cosmopolitan thought. The understanding of common rights moved from the politically restrained grounds of Kantian cosmopolitanism to the Heldian-Archibugian model of cosmopolitan democracy. By the time of the Draft Constitution, the European Union’s citizenship discourse expressed Habermasian aspirations of establishing a new political community resting on the premises of constitutional democracy and a deliberative model of cosmopolitan citizenship. The rhetorical transition to the Habermasian model implies the European Union’s ambition to overcome the traditional limitations of union citizenship and the shortcomings of its cosmopolitan credentials. It can be considered as a conscious move away from the national prototype to a postmodernist notion of citizenship.

Nonetheless, the translation of the rhetorical aspirations into concrete treaty provisions was insufficient, in terms of its cosmopolitan stance and postmodern potentials. As for its cosmopolitan credentials, union citizenship does not fully subscribe to the principles of universal egalitarianism. As political rights are not conferred on the basis of a Europe-wide residency rule, a considerable part of Europe’s social constituency, TCNs, are excluded from the European Union’s political process. TCNs are conferred only the civic entitlements of union citizenship. Further, due to the lack of supranational competences and common provisions to converge national citizenship policies, conditions for accessing national citizenship, and therefore the union status, are persistently diverse across the member states. This means that the European Union has also failed to establish a European norm of equality with regard to nationals as well.

From a postmodernist perspective, the shortcomings of the common citizenship policy—the nationality clause and partial constitutionalisation of the residency principle pertaining to voting rights; failure to include national elections in the electoral rights package; and consolidation of national competencies over supranational interests in the policy area of citizenship—all detract from the objective of creating a direct link between the individual and the union. Maastricht, rather, helped to consolidate national sovereignty^[90] and established a subordinate supranational citizenship status. The post-national credentials of the European Union’s common citizenship regime thus remained compromised.

The post-national multicultural qualities of union citizenship were limited by the consolidation of the nationality rule. The nationality rule undermined the cosmopolitan principles of generality and reinforced the national character of citizenship in Europe. Further, it prioritised national/ethno-cultural difference over other types of diversity.

Finally, the decision-making procedure specified in the treaties is problematic regarding the transnational value of common voting rights. Gardner remarks that electoral rights are the central ‘hallmarks’ of citizenship since ‘the content of the rights and duties of citizens at any one time can indirectly be influenced or determined by its exercise’. ^[91] Despite the rhetorical ambitions, the treaties continue to facilitate representative, rather than participatory and deliberative, democracy. Therefore the European Union currently does not sufficiently facilitate its citizens’ involvement in the shaping of the future direction of the integration project. Further, the competence to determine the very status of union citizenship is still not delegated to the European Parliament, thus allocating European citizens a minor role in the shaping of the European Union’s evolving political community.

The two corollary conclusions that stem from these observations are the following. First, the legal and institutional foundations of union citizenship have failed to move away from the national prototype of citizenship. The treaties have not established the postmodernist credentials of political membership and collective belonging in Europe. The limited transnational and multicultural character undermines the legitimating potential of union citizenship. Second, the bifurcation of narrative and treaty feeds into a rhetorical overreach, which, in the retrospect of the failure to ratify the Draft Constitution and its subsequent revision, ^[92] has contributed to the European Union’s lingering legitimacy deficit. It can then be argued that the proto-cosmopolitanist posing of citizenship in Europe seriously undermines the integrative and legitimating potential of common citizenship in Europe.

On such critical grounds, I wish to put forward the following recommendation. By overcoming the postmodernist deficiencies of union citizenship, the European Union could translate its rhetorical promises into concrete political action, which in turn would close the union’s legitimacy gap. In particular, in order to generate a culturally neutral and all-inclusive framework for accommodating all types of diversity, the European Union shall override the nationality clause and place political rights on a residency basis, and establish a European condition of residency. This would enhance the multicultural credentials of union citizenship and also emancipate it from national citizenship, making it of post-national status. Further to this, by the extension of the co-decision principle, the European Union could place the parliament on equal footing with the council. This, matched with residency-based electoral supranational rights, would found the transnational condition of EU democracy.