A Duty Free Europe? What's Wrong with Kochenov's Account of EU Citizenship Rights
European Law Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4, July 2014, pp. 482-498.
15 Pages Posted: 2 Sep 2015
Date Written: July 2014
Abstract
This article disputes the recent argument of Dimitry Kochenov advocating an ‘EU Citizenship without Duties’. His thesis rests on an untenable form of philosophical anarchism that overlooks the role played by our political obligations to state structures in securing rights. At best, his argument suggests a ‘thin’ form of EU citizenship that allows European citizens to choose which of the Member States they wish to become morally obliged to. A ‘thicker’ form of EU level citizenship could only arise by creating civic obligations at the EU level, the position he rejects. To the extent certain Court of Justice judgments in this area reflect parallel reasoning to Kochenov’s, they too suffer from a similar failure to appreciate the role of civic duties to particular Member States (or eventually the EU) in creating and securing the status of citizens as equal rights bearers.
Keywords: citizenship, EU, rights, duties, philosophical anarchism
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