‘Civis Europeus Sum’, Thirty Years On: Opinion of Advocate General Jacobs in Konstantinidis

Abstract

The task of this book chapter is to analyse the legendary Opinion of Sir Francis Jacobs in Konstantinidis in the context of the key developments of European citizenship law that followed. The ‘civis … sum’ logic on the Opinion is approached from five interrelated angles: as an attack on classical constitutionalism; as a tool to crack states open; as an unjustifiable attempt of an EU law-orchestrated take-over; as a vehicle of the ‘market’; and, finally, as an utopia. By offering a tour d’horizon of EU’s approaches to citizenship and by delving into the innate conflict between the crucial substance of citizenship of the Union on the one hand and the nationalities of the Member States on the other, the argument is made that in failing to adopt the broad Socratic approach offered by the learned AG, the Court in Konstantinidis started sketching the oxymoronic “market citizenship”, which both limits the potential of EU law and, at the same time, fails to resolve the conflict of principle between the nationalities of the Member States and the evolving citizenship of the Union. The citizenship coming, per se, without rights, solves no outstanding problems and falls short of Sir Francis’ ambition, articulated thirty years ago.