| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 歐洲研究所 === 88 === The development of citizenship is different from time to time. In ancient Greece, citizenship was essentially a hereditary status, which was used to distinguish between citizen of a city-state, metics and strangers. It was, even then, a prerequisite for the enjoyment of certain political rights in the public sphere, which was where men enjoyed the rights and privileges of citizenship and contributed to the development of justice and the self-government of the community.
In ancient Rome, citizenship was viewed as the personal and legislative status of certain persons, which entailed a right to own property, and a number of other ascertainable positive rights.
The notion of citizenship in the early Roman Empire referred to the “status of (rational) property-owners who had certain public duties and responsibilities within the city-state”.
Early definition of citizenship essentially focused on it as a personal status with conferred a number of rights, in particular, the right to participate politically in the life of the community.
Citizenship nowadays has a close relationship with nationality. Nationality, legally binds an individual to the nation, people or territory to which he or she belongs, and citizenship means specifically the possession by the person under consideration of the highest or at least of a certain higher category of political rights and (or) duties established by the nations or state’s constitution. As a person in the twentieth century, we take it as normal and granted, in the Treaty of European Union (Treaty of Maastrict), there is a new article about European Union citizenship (Article 8): Citizenship is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizenship of the Union.
The European citizenship is a whole new development of citizenship. What is the contribution of European Union citizenship, and what happened in the history of citizenship from ancient Greece until the twentieth century?
The thesis discusses mainly on the following aspects:
1. The difference between citizenship and nationality, and the development of citizenship;
2. The citizenship-like right before the treaty on European Union－free movement of persons;
3. The rights of European Union citizenship:
Fundamental rights
Social rights
Social rights
It is still hard to know if the citizenship of EU could succeed, and what the citizenship of EU would be in the future. Besides, there are still some problems that are waiting for people to get through. So this topic about citizenship would never have an end.
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