Krems.
We're now starting the post-lunch session on this last day of EDEM 2010, and the first speaker is Alexander Balthasar. His fundamental question is what citizenship of the European Union may mean, following the recent treaty process. This is highlighted especially by the instrument of the European Citizens' Initiative, which has been positioned by European bodies as a kind of petition process, but could also become a much more powerful or flexible instrument rivaling proposals by the EU Council or Parliament. The obvious difference is that in order to launch an ECI, 'only' one million signatures are required, whereas Council or Parliament have a more clearly legitimated mandate to act.
The idea of European citizenship begun to develop with the shift from a European Community to the European Union, and the development of democratic institutions for the EU. However, the member nation states remain the source of the EU's legitimacy, and citizenship continues to be tied to these national states rather than the EU as such. This also affects the positioning of the European Parliament, in fact - and the EP is not a fully representative body, as smaller national populations are comparatively better represented than the peoples of larger member states.
Similarly, there continue to be significant debates around voting rights - are citizens living in another EU member state allowed to vote in that state (and for its EP representatives), for example, or do they continue to vote for the EP representatives of their nation-state of origin? Such problems do not apply in the same way for petitions, of course, as proportional democratic representation is less crucial here.
