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A Duty‐Free E urope? What's Wrong with K ochenov's Account of EU Citizenship Rights
Author(s) -
Bellamy Richard
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
european law journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1468-0386
pISSN - 1351-5993
DOI - 10.1111/eulj.12142
Subject(s) - citizenship , argument (complex analysis) , duty , member state , economic justice , state (computer science) , law and economics , law , political science , politics , position (finance) , member states , european court of justice , sociology , european union , european union law , business , international trade , computer science , biochemistry , chemistry , finance , algorithm
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.