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J. Shaw
citizenship reveals that there is no such story of linear progress, but rather a
set of complex and often countervailing narratives of Europeanisation and
de-Europeanisation, which together combine to make up the full picture.
For the purposes of this essay, we need to think of Europeanisation as
more than just the principle that membership of the EU means that member
states must comply with EU law and implement legislative measures and
new administrative requirements introduced by the EU legislature. It is also
a two-way track in which elements of national choice and institutional
‘style’ find their way into EU-wide measures and approaches to policymaking as well as into its institutional forms, not least through the participation of member states in the legislative process. This is a broader and
more sociological concept of Europeanisation than is commonly deployed
in political science, and it incorporates also aspects of legal culture as well
as formal compliance with EU law. A similar approach is also useful when
analysing counter moves of de-Europeanisation. At the collective level,
there is the trend towards intergovernmental approaches to become once
again the norm, with a resurgence of control by the member states vis-à-vis
the Commission or the Court of Justice. At the level of member states it
encompasses not just deviations in compliance, but equally the alienation
of (some) member states from the core requirements or principles of integration, through practices such as flexibility and differentiated integration.
Finally, it includes also the hitherto unique phenomenon of Brexit, where a
member state is negotiating a formal exit from the EU, but also, for the
future, a revised relationship perhaps akin to association or membership of
the EEA via a ‘Norway’ or EFTA model, or perhaps much looser in character. Under the former model, some of the underpinning principles of EU
citizenship, such as free movement, may continue to apply, which is one
reason why it is presently very controversial in the UK as a possible postBrexit scenario.
We can now take a closer look at some of the criss-crossing pathways of
Europeanisation and de-Europeanisation. What might be seen as opposing
trends of ‘integration’ and ‘disintegration’ are in fact occurring simultaneously. First we examine the extent and character of the apparently increasing
EU law constraints upon the citizenship laws of member states. This raises
the question of how autonomous national citizenship laws may be in the
future. Second, we explore some of the main ‘citizenship consequences’ of
the Brexit vote and the anticipated departure of the United Kingdom from
the EU. The two issues are interrelated in many ways, and not just through
a common preoccupation with the question of the autonomy of different
levels within the EU’s current multilevel citizenship regime. Furthermore,
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