50 R. Bellamy be a considered one that involves a commitment to the long term interests of the polity if voters are not to engage in rent seeking or free-riding behaviour of a kind that would undermine rights. In remarking that ‘Union citizenship is destined to be the fundamental status of nationals of the member states’ the CJEU has made it sound as if this new legal status represents the ‘right of rights’, and at least one contributor to this debate – Dimity Kochenov – has read it in this way. But this judicial hyperbole ignores the extent to which these very rights rest on the underlying obligations that follow from the exercise of democratic citizenship within the member states. As such, national citizenship necessarily continues to provide the fundamental status of Union citizens. However, as the Court’s rhetorical formula continues, Union citizenship does have a key role in ‘enabling those who find themselves in the same situation to enjoy the same treatment in law irrespective of their nationality, subject to the exceptions as are expressly provided for.’ What I have suggested above is that the ‘same treatment’ must respect reciprocity between citizens within and between the member states, and that the proposed limits on access to and the exercise of national voting rights are among those exceptions that should be ‘expressly provided for’ within a political organisation committed to the ‘ever closer Union of (democratic) peoples’. As such, the Initiative raises a key issue but proposes a misguided solution, at odds with the very nature of the EU. Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permit­ ted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.