16 J. Shaw these are the human rights obligations of the member states in the absence of a withdrawal agreement on the rights of EU citizens. And yet we are led ineluctably back to the question of how far the constitutionalising effects of EU citizenship already go, and how much further they might stretch in the future. The referring judge in the Dutch case discussed above relied in his brief judgment on Rottmann and Lounes, building his reflections on the back of the classic dictum – no longer so frequently invoked by the Court of Justice and notably missing from the reasoning in Lounes – that EU citizenship is destined to be the fundamental status of the nationals of the member states.36 On that analysis, EU citizenship can be seen as an independent source of rights for citizens, and once granted cannot be taken away unless the measures adopted would pass the proportionality test. One might agree with Davies37 that with Rottmann and now Lounes the CJEU has already travelled most of the way down the road towards the conclusion that member states cannot just deprive citizens of rights once granted. However, it will doubtless come under heavy pressure to accept that the implementation of the consequences of a referendum held in the UK represents a legitimate and powerful state interest that outweighs the interests of individuals, if it comes to the question of implementing a ­proportionality test. Yet the Dutch judge has something to say about this matter too, embellishing the argument with some important – if controversial – democratic principles: [5.22] the essence of a democratic constitutional state is that the rights and interests of minorities are protected as much as possible. The same applies to the functioning of the EU as a whole which forms a democratic community of (member) states governed by the rule of law. What then, of the mythical ‘people’ so often invoked by the current UK government to justify pursuing a ‘Brexit means Brexit’ policy on the coat tails of a vote in which little more than 35 per cent of the overall registered voting population stated that the UK should ‘leave the European Union’ without being any more precise about how or with what consequences?38 How can democracy be judged in such a contest between minorities and 36 37 38 See https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:RB AMS:2018:605. For an unofficial summary of key sections of the judgment, see https://waitingfortax. com/2018/02/07/a-summary-in-english-of-the-decision-of-the-district-court-inamsterdsm/. See above n.29. What if everyone had voted in the EU referendum?’, UK and EU Blog, 28 July 2016, available at http://ukandeu.ac.uk/ what-if-everyone-had-voted-in-the-eu-referendum/