Citizenship Loss and Deprivation in the European Union (27 + 1) to deny the release on multiple grounds, whereas the declaration procedure, only accessible to bornabroad citizens under the age of 25, implies no discretionary power of the government. 23 Croatian legislation, in the same way, provides for a release procedure on a discretionary basis without any residence condition and for a declaration procedure as a right for individuals but on the condition that they have their main residence abroad. This combination of release and declaration procedures follows a territorial logic: the more established the expatriation of the individual, the less discretionary the power of the Member State to deny the renunciation. 3. Involuntary Loss of Citizenship 3.1. Introduction: Rapid Expansion in Troubled Times 3.1.1. Origin of Involuntary Loss Involuntary loss of nationality – i.e., at the initiative of the State – originates in continental law, where countries never adopted the principle of perpetual allegiance, enshrined in common law doctrine. Back in the 17th century, in France, for instance, an ordonnance published by King Louis XIV clearly stated that the Frenchmen who had “acclimatised” to a foreign land “without any intention of returning” had “forgotten what they owed their birth.”24 The sanction for this expatriation was both the loss of nationality and the forfeiture of property. Indeed, in the French modern era, voluntary expatriation was condemned as such, and nationality was the price to be paid. In the 18 th century, Pothier wrote in his Traité des personnes that “the Frenchman, having left the realm without any thought of returning, shares almost the same condition as foreigners. There is only one difference between foreigners and the expatriate French, which is that Frenchmen can have their citizenship rights reinstated by returning to the homeland with the intent of settling down.”25 Allegiance to the French monarch was thus not perpetual; permanent emigration of citizens led to revocation of their nationality by the state. As previously stated, this is a fundamental difference between the continental and the common law systems regarding the temporal nature of allegiance (perpetual v. revocable). To understand this difference, one must remember that in France, at that time, only citizens had the right to inherit; foreigners had to hand over their property to the King by virtue of the ‘droit d’aubaine’. French authorities considered that the risk was too high that the mobility of citizens would cause an outflow of wealth, because emigration would pull the “gold and silver”26 out of the country. In France, loss of nationality was thus a method for controlling the mobility of the kingdom’s subjects and, most importantly, the mobility of wealth.27 In England, however, “the crown almost never claimed the prerogative as such of seizing the property of a foreigner who died in the kingdom without native heirs.”28 Controlling the mobility of wealth was probably a lower priority in England, an island territory, than in continental France. Therefore, the bond of nationality was deemed perpetual in England, whereas in France it was associated with residence within the territory and, therefore, subjected to involuntary loss. In the common law system, however, the principle of perpetual allegiance rendered loss of 23 Medved, F. Country Report: Slovenia, [GLOBALCIT], EUDO Citizenship Observatory, 2010/21, 15. 24 Pothier, R.-J. (1778) 1825. Traité des Personnes. Reprint in Œuvres de Pothier, vol. 8, edited by A. Dupin. Paris: Bechet ainé, 36-37. 25 Ibid., 37. 26 Loisel, A. (1607). Institutes coustumieres. Paris: Henry le Gras, 9. 27 Gaven, J.-C. (2017). “La déchéance Avant la Nationalité: Archéologie d’une Déchéance de Citoyenneté.” Pouvoirs, 160 (1), 85–98. 28 Sahlins, P. (2004). Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime and After. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 32. European University Institute 7