20 years of steering the European Citizenship – How to Get Europeans on Board?

Sammanfattning: This thesis has the constructive aim of analyzing the European Commission's normative expectations on European citizens and exploring the prerequisites for their realization. To this purpose, three main perspectives in citizenship theory, liberalism, republicanism and communitarianism are used in the analysis of official Commission documents. The main sources are the regularly published Citizenship Reports which allow for a tracing of the concept's development. The analysis points towards a thickening of the concept over time. From having been defined in mainly liberal terms, the citizenship concept has thickened and demands increasingly from citizens in terms of participation and identification through the introduction of an ethical component. The norm suggests actively participating European citizens united in a European identity acting in a European public space. In order for these expectations to be met by citizens, enabling conditions must be created at both the EU and Member State levels. To this purpose, some of the thesis' proposals are a stronger focus on duties in the Treaty, open political contestation and mechanisms of complexity reduction enabling participation.