Citizenship for Real: Its Hypocrisy, Its Randomness, Its Price 53 III. Shachar overstates the actual importance of the political dimension of citizenship. In the age of post-heroic geopolitics plenty of people naturalise or cherish the nationality they already have for entirely different reasons. Indeed, the political aspect, rather than being at the core of citizenship, regrettably becomes the scapegoat for justifying refusals to extend the status to those who already belong to the society. The idea that only the right people participate in political life is so important that you will be discriminated, threatened with deportation, exploited and humiliated in order to protect the sacred body politic. The troubling truth is that more and more people do not care about politics, as opinion polls amply testify. And those who do can be politically engaged despite not having the formal status of membership – as the German citizen Daniel Cohn-Bendit was in Paris 1968. The basic presumption of the necessary connection between citizenship and political participation should be approached critically and is hardly defensible, especially in the EU (see the earlier EUDO CITIZENSHIP Forum on national voting right for EU citizens in other member states2). Insisting on the political dimension misrepresents thus what citizenship is about and ruins many lives by blowing a luxury right to politics totally out of proportion for the sake of justifying random exclusion. IV. It is clear that, just as the passports of other micro-states, Maltese citizenship as such is of very little practical value apart from visa-free travel. All the rights it brings – to work and live in the EU, non-discrimination in the EU and diplomatic protection outside the EU (when was the last time you saw a Maltese embassy?) – are related to the EU and the EU only. Clearly, what the Maltese are selling is EU citizenship and they are quite right to do so, since Member States are fully competent in this field, as international and also European law teaches us. Rich newly-minted Maltese will satisfy all the formal requirements of the EU Citizenship Directive 2004/38, thus becoming ideal EU citizens in London and Paris. Following the Micheletti and Rottmann decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the principles of EU law should be respected – and 2 Bauböck, R., P. Cayla & C. Seth (eds.) (2012), ‘Should EU citizens living in other Member States vote there in national elections?’, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies EUDO Citizenship Obervatory Working Paper 2012/32, Florence: European University Institute, available at http://cadmus.eui.eu/ handle/1814/22754.