Citizenship for Real: Its Hypocrisy, Its Randomness, Its Price Dimitry Kochenov Peter Spiro’s tactful diagnosis of the flaws in Ayelet Shachar’s kickoff text to this Forum is correct: Shachar fails to convince when arguing for saving citizenship against itself. (1) She understates the hypocrisy and randomness underlying any determination of citizenship. (2) She ignores the problem of de facto statelessness, which reveals a questionable understanding of discrimination. (3) She exaggerates the importance of the political dimension of citizenship and presents the link between citizenship and political participation as unproblematic. (4) Shachar claims that the sale of EU citizenship affects other member states, but this is perfectly legitimate since there is no breach of EU law involved. (5) There are multiple ways how to acquire EU citizenship which shows why Shachar’s acceptance of naturalisation as a state-mandated purification ritual fails to capture reality. Overall, Shachar’s argument against the Maltese policy does not stand. If we take democracy seriously, then it should be for the Maltese alone to set the price. I thus disagree also with Magni Berton when he claims that the high price at which Malta sells EU passports is problematic. I. There are many stories about how selling things is bad: land is not for sale; love is not for sale; salvation is not for sale. Such proclamations make one wonder whether the purpose of ethical high points is to totally contradict reality. Hypocrisy itself is difficult to sell as an argument: land can be bought, prostitution is often legal and some of the greatest art was sponsored by those who wanted to buy salvation for themselves. To insist that citizenship is not for sale is to ensure the perpetuation of the outright randomness of its conferral as well as hypocritical and self-righteous excuses lurking behind fundamental mechanisms of exclusions. Those boasting Italian great grandparents in Paraguay, members of Polish diasporas in Australia and elsewhere, large benefactors and talented sportsmen – all these people can become Europeans, however random the rules. But the critique focuses on those countries that offer citizenship for sale in a perfectly transparent way. © The Author(s) 2018 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating Transformations of National Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92719-0_11 51