Abstract:
The European integration project has shaped a legal reality where the importance of particular
Member State nationalities is dwarfed in relation to that of EU citizenship. Currently the Member
States’ nationalities, short of being abolished in the legal sense, mostly serve as access points to the
status of EU citizenship, which has also come to influence the rules for the acquisition of the Member
State’s nationalities. Six Member States already provide for different naturalisation procedures for the
acquisition of nationality for those already in possession of the EU citizenship status. The majority of
the assumptions regarding Member State nationalities stand to be profoundly questioned today. EU
citizenship is no longer a merely derivative status, leading to the need for re-conceptualisation of its
relationship with the nationalities of the Member States, if not opening a new chapter in the process of
European integration.
