EU Citizenship for a European Republic of the Free and Equals or of States

This article provides a critical comment on chapter five of Richard Bellamy's A Republican Europe of States. The chapter focuses on EU citizenship as a status conferring to EU citizens certain entitlements to social and political rights when they reside in a member state other than their own. The chapter rejects the view that EU citizenship should entail equal access to social and political rights and provides an argument as to why EU citizenship cannot but consist of a more restricted bundle of social and political rights than national citizenship. I question both the scope and necessity of these restrictions on EU citizens' equal access to social and political rights, as well as whether this picture of EU citizenship is consistent with the earlier theoretical chapters of the book.