Citizenship for Sale: Could and Should the EU Intervene? 63 If Malta’s policy exploits EU citizenship in a way that does not conflict with EU law, should the European Parliament – as an institution rooted in the principle of representative democracy – not use the opportunity to reflect instead more deeply upon the meaning of (national and EU) citizenship in a compact between states such as the European Union? In that context, a comparison of the position of the Commission and the Parliament can be instructive. The Commission – unlike the Parliament – can speak with one voice, and has been assigned executive and enforcement powers under the Treaties. So a standard argument based on the duty of Member States to comply with EU law involves trying to get the Commission to say something about a situation in a given Member State, perhaps as a precursor to doing something such as bringing an enforcement action. But time and again, the argument fails, precisely because the issue falls outside the scope of EU law. The powers of the Commission to take such actions are often overestimated because observers have watched how it has dealt with accession states. However, the context of enlargement deceives us, because it is during that phase of pre-accession negotiations – and whilst states live in fear of being told they do not comply with the Copenhagen criteria in relation to democracy and fundamental rights – that the Commission can make pointed interventions in areas of national sovereignty, including citizenship. Changes to the citizenship regimes of many of the Western Balkan states can be attributed directly or indirectly to pressure from ‘Europe’. Perhaps the most obvious example is that of Macedonia4, which changed its rules on acquisition of citizenship as one step towards a more consociational settlement involving the majority of ethnic Macedonians and the minority Albanian group. Similar effects via the implementation of national visa liberalisation roadmaps can be seen in Montenegro and Serbia. On the other hand, as the case of the controversial constitutional amendments in Hungary has shown, there is little the Commission can do to intervene in Member States, given the limitations of its current enforcement instruments5, however egregious would appear to be the effects of the amendments introduced upon the ‘entitlement’ of that particular state to be a full member of Europe’s democratic community of states. 4 5 Spaskovska, L. (2011), Macedonian Citizen: ‘Former Yugoslav’, Future European?, CITSEE Study, available online at http://www.citsee.eu/citseestudy/ macedonian-citizen-%E2%80%98former-yugoslav%E2%80%99-future-european Ungarn – was tun? Folge 2: ein besonderes Vertragsverletzungsverfahren, Verfassungsblog, available at https://verfassungsblog.de/category/debates/ ungarn-was-tun-folge-2-ein-besonderes-vertragsverletzungsverfahren/