Abstract
The enlarged EU has now entered on a new phase; ratification of Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. The Constitution, which represents the will of EU to be more democratic political community, defines the EU citizens as one of the subjects of New Europe. The ‘EU citizen’ is every person holding the nationality of a member state. Consequently, the third-country national residents are excluded. Moreover, they are at a disadvantage by comparison with EU citizens. The EU citizen has a lot of rights which third-country nationals (TCNs) don't because the EU Citizenship is the membership both in EU and member states. In other words, the Duality of EU Citizenship disadvantages TCNs. However, the boundary of citizens cannot be determined by democratic processes because by definition, democratic decisions are made only by the citizen. Initially, at least, the boundary of citizens is given. However, there are immigrants crossing borders. In this sense, the democratic citizenship is defined as permanent re-demarcation of the boundary identifying citizens and subjects. Therefore in this paper, we explore the access of EU Citizenship in order to make EU Citizenship democratic, focusing on legal status of third-country national residents in the context of the ‘integration’ of TCNs in EU which has established ‘progressively an area of freedom, security and justice’ since the Treaty of Amsterdam. In this area, TCNs are now considered not only human resources, but also members of society. In 2003, EU established ‘long-term resident status’ of TCNs, which would be a core legal status in ‘integration process’. The long-term residents have many rights including freedom of movement. However, the EU Citizenship is still linked to nationality of a member state, which is the final legal status in ‘integration process’ of TCNs. Paradoxically, if a long-term resident exercises her right to free movement, she and her family may not meet conditions of nationality acquisition because of the residency requirement. Therefore, the asymmetry of duality turns out to be a problem, and the EU Citizenship must have another criterion independent of member states nationality. Finally we would find the possibility of open membership in the symmetrical Duality of EU Citizenship, which could ensure integrity of memberships in EU.
