LewRockwell By Ryan McMaken
Except for a small number of diplomatic passports, there is no such thing as an EU passport. In practice, to be a citizen of the European Union means to be a citizen of one of the member states of the EU. It is the EU member states themselves which ultimately determine who is a citizen of the EU. As The Economist put it, “Deciding who is and is not a citizen is a jealously guarded right of EU member states.”
The most rabid Europhiles, of course, would be more than happy to abolish member-level citizenship altogether and have Brussels control it all. Among many Europeans, though, there is a lingering reluctance to hand over powers of naturalization to the central European ruling elite. There is good reason to be cautious. Centralizing the power to grant citizenship has long been important to state building, to consolidating political power, and to erasing allegiance to any political institution except the central state.
This centralization of authority over naturalization has helped expand state coercion through both social and political effects. For example, were the member states of the EU to abandon member-state control over citizenship, being a “citizen of Europe” would soon become far more important in everyday life than being a citizen of, say, Italy or Denmark. Transferring naturalization powers to Brussels would greatly accelerate the Europhile program of creating a European megastate under which places like Italy or Poland or Austria become mere administrative units.
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