The Constitutional Mosaic Across the Boundaries of the European Union: Citizenship Regimes in the New States of South Eastern Europe

Abstract

This paper begins by examining the relationship between citizenship of the European Union and national citizenship, and in particular the significance of EU law for the regulation of the acquisition and loss of citizenship in EU Member States, as part of a wider enquiry into how the citizenship regimes of the seven 'successor states' of the former Yugoslavia can be located within a 'constitutional mosaic' of overlapping and sometimes competing legal norms. It identifies six primary instruments whereby non-state sources of law impact upon the citizenship regimes of these states: compliance with international human rights norms; EU conditionality; direct intervention by international organisations; direct supervision by international organisations; other forms of international pressure; and overlapping citizenship regimes between the successor states. As part of a wider task of shifting attention onto the citizenship regimes of these states in the context of processes of Europeanisation as well as polity-building at the state and regional level, the paper concludes that polity-building and the processes of constructing citizenship regimes will remain closely intertwined for the foreseeable future.