What is Active European Citizenship?

It is difficult to find one agreed definition of “active European citizenship”. The idea of citizenship itself has many different definitions, but is widely recognized to have been introduced by the ancient Greeks and Romans, when free resident men were allowed to participate in civic life. In return for being guaranteed certain rights, they had certain ideas and responsibilities. Over the centuries, as Europebecame a number of nation states, the idea of citizenship as a legal concept was developed, linked to the idea of nationality of a particular country.  

However, citizenship is more than just the formal relationship between an individual and the state. It has also come to mean how individuals develop a sense of belonging to the different communities in which they participate (such as their school or workplace; the town or city where they live; a particular ethnic or religious group) and the values they share – in Europe, some of our shared values are considered to be tolerance and respect for diversity; peace; equality; respect for human rights  the right to life, the right of free speech, conscience and religion, for example. An individual can be a citizen of many different communities and at many different levels, from the local to the global. Another aspect is that citizenship always exists in public and democratic spaces, and that citizens have equal rights as well as responsibilities.  
 
It is also important to remember that while citizenship is often referred to in the context of belonging, identity, rights, equality and inclusion, it is also about exclusion, lack of belonging and denial of identity. While equality and rights may exist in the formal legal sense, in reality, there are frequently huge inequalities and lack of rights.
There are many levels on which someone can be an active citizen. An active citizen can be someone who has voted in an election; written to their Member of Parliament; taken part in a campaign, or who volunteers in their local community. An active citizen is also someone who has recognised and accepted that they also have certain responsibilities to their peers and to their community, at local, national and European level. When we talk about being ‘active citizens’ we are talking about people who choose to participate in the society in which they live, and who try and make a difference to build a better world.  

There are also different interpretations of what it is to be a European citizen. The Treaty of the European Union (the Maastricht Treaty) establishing the EU as a political union, also established the legal concept of European citizenship – everyone who holds nationality of an EU Member State is also a “citizen of the European Union,” with certain rights and duties.

The European Convention on Human Rights also provides certain protections to people living within the area covered by the convention, emphasizing that  Europeas a geographical concept is wider than the 27 Member States of the European Union.

The term “European citizen” is also is used to refer to a geographical area, a certain identity, a sense of belonging, and a set of cultural rights, so it has different meanings in different contexts. 

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