What’s in a People? Social Facts, Individual Choice, and the European Union Dimitry Kochenov Joining the majority of other contributors to this forum I fully support the useful and timely initiative for national voting rights for EU citizens, which has been overdue. My argument builds around well-known but much ignored effects of the European integration project on the member states and their societies which require adjusting our understanding of who is a foreigner in today’s Europe, i.e. what is a ‘people’ in the context of the European project. Given the wording of Article 25 TFEU, which allows the Commission to propose additional rights of EU citizenship but requires unanimity in the Council and approval by the member states, the change will not be easy. However, this would be a bad reason for not trying. Should it not be up to the individual to decide who will participate in political life rather than up to the state with its random naturalisation procedures and nonsensical tests created to divide societies instead of uniting them?1 Hailing from a totalitarian regime myself I cannot overstate the value of being left alone, free from the state’s critique, endorsements, or ideas about ‘good life’. The criterion of genuine ties that Bauböck preaches in his contribution to the present debate starts from the presumption of people’s inability to take responsible decisions for themselves whether they have such ties or not, superimposing thus their judgement with a state-mandated one. Given that those who do not have any interest in the state of residence are highly unlikely to participate in political life there, Bauböck’s contribution struggles hard with a non-existent problem. He does his best to justify the state-mandated selection of those who ‘have the ties’ profoundly mistrusting those who actually feel sufficiently affected to demonstrate that politically. As if the ties depended on state-mandated blessings! It seems that only the ‘official’ certificates are meaningful, not the actual reality they are summoned to certify, 1 See Kochenov, D. (2011), ‘Mevrouw de Jong Gaat Eten: EU Citizenship and the Culture of Prejudice’, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, EUDO Citizenship Observatory Working Paper 2011/06, Florence: European University Institute, available at http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/15774. © The Author(s) 2019 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating European Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89905-3_7 37