Creating European Citizens

Maas has written an excellent analysis and review of the evolution of European citizenship thus far. It is a welcome addition to EU literature and recommended for political scientists, historians, and scholars of the EU. The book is clearly written with extensive footnotes and references that are especially useful and valuable. There are meticulous details of negotiations and contentious debates among member states and EU institutions that bring a deeper understanding of EU workings behind closed doors. . . . Highly recommended.

In this short but very detailed work, Willem Maas seeks to outline the history of citizenship as it applies to the European Union and its antecedent organizations. The focus is both on ”the “high politics” of intergovernmental conferences”―and their behind-the-scenes compromises―and ”the “low politics” of interpretation by the Court and implementation by the Commission.” Developments in both of these areas are clearly outlined and analyzed. . . . What comes through in Maas’s work is the sense that European Union citizenship is a clear illustration of both the achievements and limitations of European integration.

Rather than focusing narrowly on the economic ramifications of integration, the author explores the drive to create a wider community of people. . . . Well written, with the argument set out in a chronological and straightforward fashion. . . . This book will appeal to theorists and practitioners alike, as well as undergraduates and those with a more specialist interest in issues of integration, citizenship, and nationalism.

Maas”s book provides a clear description and thoughtful analysis of the history of European citizenship from the Treaties of Paris and Rome in the 1950s until the present phase of European integration marked by the debate on the EU constitution. An examination of the rise of European citizenship enables a better understanding of the political nature of the European project. Contrary to the majority of works on European integration. . . . Maas argues that European political development is a manifestation of the drive to create not only a free trade zone but also a community of people.

[The book] has many strengths. . . . The organization of the book is masterly. All these issues are woven together in a mere 120 pages of text in such a way that none of their complexity is lost, while, at the same time, the book could easily be read by an interested member of the public as well as the student or scholar. — Elizabeth Meehan

Willem Maas”s study is a definitive political history of European citizenship rights and the free movement of persons, from the Treaties of Paris and Rome in the 1950s to the struggles over the EU constitution. It combines careful empirical documentation with incisive political theory, on a subject insufficiently studied by mainstream political science. While offering an upbeat account of the steady expansion and deepening of the remarkable legal construction of European citizenship, he wisely reminds us of its limitations and reversibility. — Adrian Favell, Centre d’études européennes de Sciences Po