The Utopia and the Public Space of European Citizenship

Lorena-Valeria STUPARU

Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations of the Romanian Academy

Abstract: First point of the Article 8 of Maastricht Treaty states that any person holding the nationality of a Member State is citizen of the Union and the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997) added that “Citizenship of the Union complements national citizenship and shall not replace it”. Beyond these “technical” issues European citizenship can also be considered in terms of a philosophical view. My study aims to show that this new positioning of the individual in the political form of European Union is a real and right-full manifestation of the citizen as “rational being” concept whose utopian connotations belong to political and cultural value system of  European space.

Keywords: citizen, european citizenship, public space, informational area, philosophical view.

1.       INTRODUCTION

Before being a legally regulated reality, the European citizenship, such as the national citizenship, is a projection of the individual in a public space that extends the private space, enhancing its role and adding sense to its political being condition discovered since the European antiquity. If being European means, in terms of culture, to recognize yourself in a pattern of Europeanness, in something from the field of universality which also includes individual differences - being a European citizen means more than a subjective identification. More specifically, it means a new political and civic identity which can be found in institutional realities and within a specific area whose recent changes occur at both real and virtual levels. In this respect, among the concepts that have contributed to transforming the geographical and historical Europe into a political Europe, the european citizenship is distinguished by a functionality whose utopian connotations ennobles it.

2.       THE FRAMEWORK OF PHILOSOPHICAL THINKING ON EUROPEAN

CITIZENSHIP AND THE PUBLIC SPACE

In the notion’s phere of European citizenship are intersecting mentalities regarding the identity and its crisis, related to the otherness in its disjunctive or complementary meanings, to its end, understood as the decline of the “radical otherness” (concept analyzed by Marc Guillaumme and Jean Baudillard)[i]. If at the beginning of its history, the idea of citizenship has instituted the otherness of those which aren’t citizens, the more we advance in modern times, citizenship becomes the status which formally puts an end to otherness. At least to that “radical”, because otherwise, the otherness of “class” is kept in reality. National citizenship is the “common denominator” of the locals and “ethnics” which become each for other “neighbor” in a the political frame of the state. The quality of citizen whereby people coexist is also that which  approaches the “radical otherness” in a public space. We resemble one another by citizenship, which is a common denominator: the neighbor or the fellow is in the same time the citizen. On the other hand, citizenship implies the right to alterity (in its profound sense), being itself a kind of “otherness” compared to “natural self”  as it was understood by Rousseau.

The alterity highlighted and concealed at the same time through the citizenship status, also occurs in the case of integration of different members in a group, of the incorporation of different groups within a national community and, more recently, of the integration of citizens with their states in the European Union which becomes the potential public space of their manifestation.

Not only the cultural and “natural” identity alienate in the citizen, but the citizen himself alienates from the group of origin. Dominique Schnapper shows that there is “a natural essential difference between ethnicity, lived as a feature immediately, and participation in the nation, the latter being the result of the detachment of data characteristics”. In other words, the nation, i.e. the Community of citizens “in Hegelian terms, is the product of a culture, or Bildung, which aims to alienate us from ourselves, to raise us through this ‘dispossession’, beyond the limitations of our belonging to a particular people, realizing the universal essence of the humans”[ii]. At this level, the concept of European citizenship which in principle “alienates” all the members of integrated states, while ensuring end to otherness, achieves - interpreting Pierre Manent’s vision - the postmodern ideal of European construction: “Europe is a political promise because it promises the exit from the policy”, which would announce “a meta or post-political world, an unmediated human world”.[iii]

Foreseeing such a possibility post-historical, Dominique Schnapper draws attention to the potential risks it entails: ”In fact, the ‘post-national’ citizenship desired by philosophers and lawyers anxious of any nationalist derives, if it would be adopted, would also act for the purposes of depoliticization. Within the nation were built the legitimacy and democratic practices: the weakening of the national state, which is a consequence of European construction risks to involve that of democracy.(...) In Western Europe societies that do not recognize neither the legitimacy of religious principle nor the dynastic principle, the nationel link’s dissolution risks to weaken even more the social relation”.[iv]

A philosophical answer we can find pursuing the history of European democracy from the beginnings until today, as does Salvo Mastellone:

“European unification called into question the national state, the political representativeness, the power of governments, giving a particular value to the topic of democracy. But what kind of democracy should be adopted by the European Union? The democracy of rules, was the answer of Norberto Bobbio (...). According to Bobbio, European civil society must comply with constitutional norms, adopt the principle of mutual tolerance, to act in the name of peace”[v].

In short, “the ideal system of stable peace can be expressed by the synthetic formula: a democratic universal order of democratic states”[vi].

Analyzing the different conceptualizations of citizenship and law, Habermas considers that they ”are the expression of a deeper disagreement on the nature of the political process”. If according to the liberal conception ”in the public space and in parliament, the process forming of opinion and political will is determined by the competition between collective actors acting strategically to maintain or acquire positions of power”[vii], in terms of republicanism ”the formation of opinion and political will in the public space and in the parliament structures is not subject to market processes, but to structures proper for a public communication  oriented to understanding”. According to Habermas, the advantage of the Republican conception ”consists in the fact that the radical democratic meaning of self-organization of society by citizens united through communication is kept, and collective objectives are not reduced to a ’bargain’ (deal) between opposing private interests”, and the disadvantage regards ”the excess of idealism” and the understanding of the the democratic process ”as dependent by the virtues of the citizen oriented to the common good”[viii]. Sharing a vision of democracy ”synonymous with the political self-organization of the society” and ”of the policy that maintains a controversial report with the state apparatus”, Habermas foreshadows the possibility of correspondences between public space and public stage.

And this is an important acquisition, because, as Luc Boltanski shows, the theater metaphor used until the eighteenth century to define the essence of society, today ”suffered a stroke which gives it a fresh meaning” and in this respect the most spectacular is the fact that ”it not only focuses on the the actor, to denounce the hypocrisy of the world or to found in an anthropology the political representation, nor on the scene of world’s show, now it is linked with the spectator who observes”. The advantage of the spectator in the political and social space can be found in the ”ability that one has to see without being seen”[ix].

Compared with the active spectators wishing to communicate their opinions more or less critical about the political, economical and social show, the citizen of a political entity has the right to manifest itself in a public space - whose emergence was defined by reference to the formation of modern conception on journalism linked to the presence of “an outside and detached observer”, being in the same time objective, impartial and tolerant. However, ”public space is not only a rational place for debate important topics”[x] because the conditions of emergence of public space are created when people are able ”to exist in two different moods: one of disengagement and one of engagement”. According to the “scenic” model of public space, since “actors are always qualified by at least through they do, by their prior commitment to ongoing actions, only the audience, observers inactive by position, are available from an engagement”. But the condition in order to achieve this space consists in the fact that “all people are able to dispose of same network information, between them all connections being possible in the initial state, and also they must know the same causes”[xi], although “in the public space the transportation of information take a different form because it opposes to the common space [xii].

According to Habermas’s interpretation from the study “Three normative models of democracy” already quoted, in Hannah Arendt’s political writings (of which we can mention for the subtle distinctions between public and private, the work The Human Condition) expressed herself “against the private dimension of civism as a characteristic of a depoliticized population”. Moreover, contrary to establish the legitimacy with the help of state parties, “the political public space must be revitalized so that it can regenerate a citizenship able to (re)learn, as a decentralized self-management, the state power emancipated in the form of bureaucracy”[xiii].

It is difficult to evaluate the extent to which this is possible by assuming and recognition of European citizenship, the more so as the Union documents, although promising in fact, are bushy in the form.

 3. THE LEGISLATIVE FRAMEWORK OF EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP

European citizenship as defined in the Treaty on European Union signed in Maastricht in 1992 which becames effective in 1993 is an attributive citizenship conferred by the constituent states of the European Union, based on reciprocity of rights between Europeans, in fact a substitute for the European “nationality”; in other words, a kind of citizenship without nation.

The Article 8 of The Maastricht Traety Provisions amending the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community with a view to establishing the European community from 7 february 1992, on the ctizenship of the Union this stipulates that: “1. Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. 2. Citizens of the Union shall enjoy the rights conferred by this Treaty and shall be subject to the duties imposed thereby”. The Article 8 a of this Treaty brings details such as:”1. Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States, subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in this Treaty and by the measures adopted to give it effect. 2. The Council may adopt provisions with a view to facilitating the exercise of the rights referred to in paragraph 1; save as otherwise provided in this Treaty, the Council shall act unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after obtaining the assent of the European Parliament”. In Article 8 b of the same act, we are informed that: ”1. Every citizen of the Union residing in a Member State of which he is not a national shall have the right to vote and to stand as a candidate at municipal elections in the Member State in which he resides, under the same conditions as nationals of that State. This right shall be exercised subject to detailed arrangements to be adopted before 31 December 1994 by the Council, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament; these arrangements may provide for derogations where warranted by problems specific to a Member State. 2. Without prejudice to Article 138(3) and to the provisions adopted for its implementation, every citizen of the Union residing in a Member State of which he is not a national shall have the right to vote and to stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament in the Member State in which he resides, under the same conditions as nationals of that State. This right shall b e exercised subject to detailed arrangements to be adopted before 31 December 1993 by the Council, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament; these arrangements may provide for derogations where warranted by problems specific to a Member State”. The Article 8 c states that: ”Every citizen of the Union shall, in the territory of a third country in which the Member State of which he is a national is not represented, be entitled to protection by the diplomatic or consular authorities of any Member State, on the same conditions as the nationals of that State. Before 31 December 1993, Member States shall establish the necessary rules among themselves and start the international negotiations required to secure this protection”.  The Article 8 d formulates another fundamental right: “Every citizen of the Union shall have the right to petition the European Parliament in accordance with Article 138d. Every citizen of the Union may apply to the Ombudsman established in accordance with Article 138e.”[xiv]

Dacă primul punct din articolul 8 al Tratatului de la Maastrict afirmă „Este cetăţean al Uniunii orice persoană care deţine naţionalitatea unui stat membru”, în Tratatul de la Amsterdam (1997, intrat în vigoare în 1999) se adaugă: “Cetăţenia Uniunii completează cetăţenia naţională şi nu o înlocuieşte”. Tratatul de la Amsterdam, intrat în vigoare la 1 mai 1999, a consolidat protecţia drepturilor fundamentale, condamnând orice formă de discriminare, şi a recunoscut dreptul la informaţie şi protecţia consumatorilor. If the first point of Article 8 of the Treaty of Maastrict stated that any person holding the nationality of a Member State is a citizen of the Union, in the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997, became effective in 1999) is added that the citizenship of the Union complements national citizenship and not replace it. The Amsterdam Treaty strengthened the protection of fundamental rights, condemning all forms of discrimination, and recognized the right to information and consumer protection.

This “complementary” citizenship means a political situation of the individual beyond the boundary between “an autonomous and conflictual citizenship” and getting “a cultural, economical or social citizenship” as remarked Catherine Wihtol de Wenden: “Europe which felt the need to constitute itself from the moment when it ceased to be a center of the world, putting an end to the Franco-German conflict and to the “trade of nations”, has tried to replace the world of the countries by a transnational citizenship, more economic and cultural than political in front of the globalization.[xv]

Nevertheless, as the same author remarks, ”Europe of citizens” who made a qualitative leap at Maastricht (1992), exceeding the ”Europe of workers” of 1957 cannot constitute by a decree or by a treaty and we can add that to achieve this status is required an adequate public space.

Despite this philosophical remark, EU citizenship under the Treaty on European Union, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, is subsumed under the principle of ”the strengthening of European democracy”. Since the Introduction states that ”The Treaty of Lisbon puts the citizen back at the heart of the European Union (EU) and its institutions. It aims to revive the citizen’s interest in the EU and its achievements, which sometimes appear too remote. One objective of the Treaty of Lisbon is to promote European democracy which offers citizens the opportunity to take an interest in and participate in the functioning and development of the EU”. And ”Such an objective necessarily depends on better recognition of European citizenship in the founding Treaties of the EU. The Treaty of Lisbon also endeavours to simplify and clarify the functioning of the Union in order to make it more understandable, and therefore more accessible to citizens. Finally, the Treaty of Lisbon strengthens the representation and participation of the citizen in the European process. The creation of a citizens’ initiative is one of the main innovations”. Developing the idea of a better recognition of citizens in the Treatis, ”The Treaty of Lisbon introduces a new article in which it fully recognises European citizenship”. Thus, ”the Article 10 of the Treaty on EU provides that citizens are directly represented at institutional level by the European Parliament. The article adds that this representative democracy is one of the foundations of the EU. Such recognition does not give citizens new rights but it does have strong symbolic value in that it enshrines the principle of European citizenship in the founding Treaties. Article 10 also establishes a principle of proximity which provides that decisions must be taken as closely as possible to the citizens. This principle applies especially in the implementation of competences within the EU. This implementation should involve national and local administrations as effectively as possible, so as to bring the EU closer to its citizens”.

As for issues relating directly to the European public space, namely concerning ”A European Union more accesible to citizens”, is shown that ”The EU has often dismissed the image of a body with a complex structure and procedures. The Treaty of Lisbon clarifies the functioning of the EU in order to improve citizens’ understanding of it. The vast numbers of legislative procedures are now giving way to a standard procedure and special legislative procedures detailed on a case by case basis. Similarly, the old pillar structure has been abolished in favour of a clear and precise division of competences within the EU”. In the same context, the Treaty of Lisbon improves the transparency of work within the EU. It extends to the Council the principle of public conduct of proceedings, which is already applied within the European Parliament. Moreover, this greater transparency will result in better information for citizens about the content of legislative proceedings, which has the effect a grater participation of citizens in the decision-making process: ”The Treaty of Lisbon establishes a right of citizens’ initiative for the first time, introduced by Article 11 of the Treaty on EU: not less than one million European nationals may invite the Commission to submit a proposal on a specific matter. This provision expresses the EU’s wish to involve its citizens in European projects and in the taking of decisions that concern them[xvi].

The opening of the European Union to the East was accompanied by a wave of Euroscepticism more or less manifest, signaling a crisis of legitimacy. On this basis, EU citizens  are found at the crossroads of several roads between individualism and collective identities (regional, religious or ethnic), between the local, national or international stages, between universalism and specificity claiming: ”If Europe is seeking, it is because the invention of European identity is seeking his own imaginary, an imaginary which must at the same time to protect itself from the trap of hide the differences through a reductive identification unifying and false, and to define the unity (…): you are not less a French, if you are an European or a Muslim; you can be a Catalan, a Corsican or a Breton while defining yourself as a European and as a national of a Member State “[xvii]. If European citizenship seems to be ”the sociocultural texture of political Europe” which would otherwise remain - according with Jacques Delors’s phrase - ”an unidentified political object“[xviii], European identity is expressed, most probably, by reference to Europe as a symbol and as the space able to unify the economic, legal and communitarian of citizens from member states. And this despite the lack of symmetry between East and West, despite a “dual” European society which is manifested by the formation of a ”Europe for the elite citizens” and a ”Europe of the workers“[xix]; despite a Europe organized around urbanity and civility, limited to individuals who share a common language (democracy, rule of law, aspirations to political consensus, reconciliation, valuing individualism and privacy) on the one hand, and on the other a Europe of ”the excluded from the edge”[xx].

But also for these  latter, at least in principle, European citizenship provides ”a framework of extensive life”, as shown in practice and on social networks, in online forums and media by the rights of citizens of the member states: freedom of movement, the right to stay, the right of establishment, the right to work and study in other EU Member States, the right to vote and to stand for election to the European Parliament and in municipal elections in the State of residence, under the same conditions with the citizens of this state; the right to benefit on the territory of a third country (not a member state of the European Union) from consular protection from the diplomatic authorities of another Member State, if the State of origin has no diplomatic or consular representation in the relevant third country ; right to petition the European Parliament and the right to appeal to the European Ombudsman to address cases of maladministration by the Community institutions. 

EU legislation sets however many conditions for exercising these rights. European Commission, having the role to ensure compliance with Union Treaty, oversees the implementation of the provisions relating to European citizenship and issues periodic reports on the various situations encountered. 

In the Amsterdam Treaty is specified that any European citizen and any natural or legal person having its registered office in a Member State has a right of access to European Parliament, Council of the European Union and the European Commission, within the rationale of public or private interest.

 Regarding the condition of information in the public space, declaratively, citizen information is considered a priority by the European institutions. In 1998, the European Commission released the information service ”Europe direct”, in order to inform citizens of the rights and opportunities offered to them by European citizenship - a citizenship of positioning, however, and not of substitution[xxi].

Currently more in the virtual European public space there are questions related to European citizenship, such as: Are really complied the European citizenship rights? Do we know the european citizen rights? Involves such a status any obligations? Because the European citizenship requires a certain involvement, such as participation in European elections and the participation issue goes beyond elections: it reflects the manner in which the european citizen can communicate with its representatives. Is there such a communication? We make our voice heard in Brussels? If so, how? We have civic spirit in an ”european” meaning?

As illustrates various sources of information available on the internet, today “European citizenship has exceeded the scope of protection achieved at the level of nation-states and that achieved through the instruments provided by European institutions”[xxii]. And because both theorists and European politicians ”have understood that it is necessary to give a new conception of citizenship, emancipated from any accredited ideological coloratura, which underpin the truly participatory practices”, it becomes possible the discourse about ”a broad European space capable of deliberation and joint decision-making, obviously opposite to the image of a society consisting of atomized individuals”[xxiii].

4.      EUROPEAN PUBLIC SPACE AS A SPACE OF INFORMING UNION’S CITIZENS

As can be deduced from Andrew Jones’s work Globalization: Key Thinkers, the contemporary conception of public space is based on Leibniz’s philosophical perspective which criticized the newtonian idea that the space exists by itself, arguing that it can be said that there is space only when it was created ”through things”. Thus, ”social relations are inherently spatial” and the spaces ”reflect and shape the social life as a whole”. Globalization has changed the idea of common space as a sum of places ”physical close”, producing a new type of space, virtual space in which social actors can communicate instantly with each other from distant physical locations[xxiv].

Recently, Castells proposes the concept of ”space of flows” which tries to reflect the proper condition of a ”new material base of Leisure” wherein ”the dominant social processes are reorganized and administered through flows”. Since this is ”a meaningful sequence” from the social life of actors, flows space does not replace the geographical area, ”but by selective connection of places changes their functional logic and the social dynamics”. This is a ”new era” which essentially corresponds to what’s new in contemporary globalization, with the implication that, to a point in the mid of eighty years, social practices that relied on physical places for Leisure, dominated those built around spending the time away. The effect of the second type of practice’s development (due greatly to a revolution in information technology) was the change ”of social distance” between physical places. According to Castells, the development of ”space flows” is similar to the onset of a globalized social world with a new non-linear spatial logic[xxv].

Serge Latouche states that the “cultural” flows in one way start from the countries of the Centre and arrive anywhere on the planet by ”classics” broadcast media such as newspapers, radio, television, movies, books, records, video, to which are now added the virtual media. Therefore, these flows of information and cultural products ”inform” the desires and necessities, forms of behavior, attitudes, education systems, lifestyles of the receptors.”[xxvi]

In addition to the disadvantage of ”imaginary’s standardization”, this phenomenon has the advantage that the West - the place of projection and achieving European citizenship - designates - more than a geographical entity or a precise space - ”a direction”[xxvii].

And this direction to the West as ”more ideological than geographical concept”[xxviii] is the one where the citizen of a political entity which is still building (European Union) can manifest itself in a space more or less real, more or less virtual. This aspect reiterates the philosophical premises of European citizenship and public space. According to Habermas, in the description of a political public sphere intersect at least two processes: on the one hand, the communicational production of legitimate power and, on the other hand, the monopolization of media force to create the loyalty, of requirements and of an ”compliance” to the imperatives of the system. From this perspective, “a public sphere able to political functioning needs not only guarantees received from state institutions, it is also linked to the support of cultural heritage and socializing patterns, to political culture of a population accustomed to freedom”[xxix]. Also available for both public space own of the national citizenship as well as those concerning European citizenship is that ”assumptions regarding a political functioning public sphere (...) can no longer be simply characterized as utopian”[xxx].

The European citizenship status pays attention to citizens public information  and to their feeling of belonging to an ideal space. In this regard, in the center of Bucharest operates a ”European Public Space (EPS), managed by the European Commission Representation in Romania and by European Parliament Information Office in Romania. This ”is a multifunctional space, opened daily to the public” and hosts conferences, official events, exhibitions, film projections, press conferences, presentations, book launches, public lectures, aiming to promote debates on European issues and increase the information level of citizens about the EU, facilitating the access to information by presenting it in an accessible and attractive format, adapted to the Romanian public interests”[xxxi].

5.      CONCLUSION

            Looking for correspondences philosophically ”hidden” and politically visible between European citizenship, European public sphere and the public space, I have tried to show that this latter represents an informational building and it is accessible at least virtually to all members of the European Union. Beyond ”the critical relationship” that the public space maintains with representatives of the power, it is a place for debates of ideas and projects, a habituation own to the rational being that involves european citizenship.

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