Suchergebnisse

The relationship between EU citizenship and nationality is still defined by 'linkage' and 'derivation': national citizenship enjoys primacy over and conditions access to EU citizenship. However, because naturalisation decisions have a European dimension as well as a cross-border dimension, various commentators have questioned whether this primacy is desirable. This article examines alternative models of EU citizenship and argues that the answer is not to reconsider the criteria of 'linkage' and 'derivation', but to create some common EU rules on 'access' to national and EU citizenship. A particularly attractive solution is for rules on the grant of nationality to be guided by the idea of a 'genuine link'. Reflecting on the Commission's recent report on investment citizenship within the EU and the debate it provoked, this article questions whether such shared rules can currently be adopted.

There is a close connection between EU citizenship and rights, both in the law and literature. This article claims that EU lawyers' understanding of EU citizenship and rights suffers from empirical, normative, and conceptual shortcomings. I will point out that there has been insufficient awareness for the boundedness of EU citizenship, the political structure of the EU and the constraints this (realistically) imposes on the 'meaningfulness' of EU citizenship. EU citizenship must not be understood as requiring an elaborate set of equal rights for all Union citizens throuzghout the EU, but valued for its ability to allow its status holders to enjoy (almost) full membership in the Member States of which they do not possess nationality.

UK nationals will lose their EU citizenship status as a result of the Brexit referendum. To prevent this, several commentators, including the European Parliament Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt, proposed to grant associate EU citizenship to UK nationals to safeguard their rights as EU citizens after Brexit. We make the case against associate EU citizenship, dismissing it on three grounds. First, it violates the letter and the spirit of EU law. Second, it violates core EU values, including the EU's promise to respect the constitutional traditions of member states and the values of democracy and the rule of law. Third, it is against EU's interests, as associate EU citizenship fails to respect reciprocity in EU relations with third countries and undermines the coherence of the edifice of EU constitutionalism.

This volume in honour of Professor Titia Loenen, upon her departure from the Utrecht School of Law, offers challenging perspectives on a number of related human rights debates, all of which are closely linked to fundamental challenges in today's world. The book consists of four parts, which represent the different angles from which the authors have looked at the core issue of this book: the close but complicated relationship between equality and human rights. Among the themes that cut across these approaches is the debate on the meaning of the universality of human rights in a 'world of conflict and diversity' (the title of the human rights research programme that Titia Loenen directed in Utrecht). A second theme deals with the relation between human rights and democracy, and between human rights and sovereignty. A recurring topic is religion and its position in human rights law as both an autonomous fundamental right (the freedom of religion) and as protection against discrimination because of beliefs. The increasing complexity of the debate itself is caused by the emergence of new human rights systems and institutions, new technologies and new concepts and this is also explored. A final theme is the shift from standard setting and monitoring to the effective implementation of both equality and (other) human rights.

This paper explains how the practice of integrating ecosystem-service thinking (i.e., ecological benefits for human beings) and institutions (i.e., organisations, policy rules) is essential for coastal spatial planning. Adopting an integrated perspective on ecosystem services (ESs) both helps understand a wide range of possible services and, at the same time, attune institution to local resource patterns. The objective of this paper is to identify the extent to which ESs are integrated in a specific coastal strategic planning case. A subsequent objective is to understand whether institutions are capable of managing ESs in terms of uncovering institutional strengths and weaknesses that may exist in taking ESs into account in existing institutional practices. These two questions are addressed through the application of a content analysis method and a multi-level analysis framework on formal institutions. Jiaozhou Bay in China is used as an illustrative case. The results show that some ESs have been implicitly acknowledged, but by no means the whole range. This partial ES implementation could result from any of four institutional weaknesses in the strategic plans of Jiaozhou Bay, namely a dominant market oriented interest, fragmented institutional structures for managing ESs, limited ES assessment, and a lack of integrated reflection of the social value of ESs in decision-making. Finally, generalizations of multi-level institutional settings on ES integration, such as an inter-organisational fragmentation and a limited use of ES assessment in operation, are made together with other international case studies. Meanwhile, the comparison highlights the influences of extensive market-oriented incentives and governments' exclusive responsibilities on ES governance in the Chinese context.