How Young People See EU and Enlargement
First Question Data Processing and Interpretation
Third Question Interpretation - EU Citizenship - Group work: Cozzutti - Ferlat- Galopin
Before showing the results of our group work I judge it relevant to discuss the concept of European citizenship.
One of the major innovations established by the Treaty of Maastricht or The Treaty of the European Union is the creation of European citizenship over and above national citizenship.
Every citizen who is a national of a Member State is also a citizen of the Union. European Citizenship establishes some rights that are added to all the previous one:
  • the right to vote and to stand as a candidate for European and municipal elections in the State in which he or she resides;
  • the right to protection by the diplomatic or consular authorities of a Member State
  • the right to petition the European Parliament

  • We can define citizenship as a legal and political status which allows the citizen to acquire some rights as an individual and some duties in relation to a political community, as well as the ability of intervening in the collective life of a state
    The condition of European citizen is reserved to every person that had the nationality of a Member State. The European citizenship does not substitute but rather supplements the citizenship of each State. "Citizenship of the Union is hereby established. Every person holding the nationality of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall complement and not replace national citizenship.'

    Treaty of Amsterdam, 1997
    European citizenship is not a consolidated reality, rather, we are attending to the beginning of a long process that will result in one way depending on European integration process. The role of schools and universities in fostering a sense of belonging, a European identity will be very important.

    Our work consisted in processing the data concerning the third question and namely: “Do you know who can have the European citizenship? ”. We arranged the answers into a table composed of five columns and five rows. In the lines we tried to evaluate the levelof knowledge revealed by the answers: NO KNOWLEDGE, SUPERFICIAL, REASONABLE and DETAILED; in the columns we introduced some information about: TOTAL NUMBER, MEN, WOMEN and AVERAGE AGE.
    From the analysis of the results collected it appears that the knowledge about European Citizenship is very superficial. in our opinion a possible explanation for this may be due to three effects:
  • The European Union is not generally a school subject;
  • People are not interested about EU;
  • People see the EU as an abstract concept.


  • Further considerations
    We considered the data collected about the third question that dealt with European citizenship. From the analysis it appears that the knowledge about that theme is rather superficial, because on a total number of fifty-five interviews, seven people do not know anything at all about the issue, thirty-six of them show only superficial knowledge, nine have a reasonable level of information about European citizenship and therefore only three people seem to know the problemin detail.
    It may be interesting to wonder why young people are so little informed. In order to try and give an answer to the question it is possible to consider three aspects:
  • - Probably the young are less interested in political problems than in different matters;
  • - Probably they read very little (ither papers or megazines dealing with political, economical, cultural and human problems;
  • - Probably their is superficial because these subjects are notgenerally object of school study.

  • We considered the data collected about the third question that dealt with European citizenship. From the analysis it appears that the knowledge about that theme is rather superficial, because on a total number of fifty-five interviews, seven people do not know anything at all about the issue, thirty-six of them show only superficial knowledge, nine have a reasonable level of information about European citizenship and therefore only three people seem to know the problemin detail.
    It may be interesting to wonder why young people are so little informed. In order to try and give an answer to the question it is possible to consider three aspects :
    • - Probably the young are less interested in political problems than in different matters;
    • - Probably they read very little (ither papers or megazines dealing with political, economical, cultural and human problems;
    • - Probably their is superficial because these subjects are notgenerally object of school study.