Antje Wiener’s aim is to contribute to a general theory of citizenship. She is aware that our analytical tools to make sense of citizenship are closely related to the state, be it the city-state or the nation-state. Therefore, we lack the tools to understand how and why citizenship can emerge and be constructed within a brand new and unfinished form of polity such as the European Union, which she rightly calls a non-state. Unlike some scholars who claim that citizenship is not possible beyond the nation-state, Wiener observes that citizenship rights appear in the context of the forming EU polity and attempts to develop tools to make sense of these puzzling developments. She is rightly convinced that the introduction of a EU citizenship can be explained. It follows a logic, which, if understood and explained, can help us to move forward towards a more comprehensive theory of citizenship-building.

Central in Wiener’s work is the notion of citizenship practice defined as the process of policy-making and political participation which shapes the terms of EU citizenship. A large part of the book consists of a detailed socio-historical reconstruction of the evolution towards EU citizenship as introduced in the Maastricht Treaty. The author distinguishes three periods: the Paris period starting in the early 1970s and comprises two European summits in Paris in 1972 and 1974; the Fontainebleau period starting with the Fontainebleau summit in 1984; and the Maastricht period starting with the Intergovernmental Conference which led to the Maastricht Treaty in 1991. For each of these three periods, Wiener looks for the political reasons why European citizenship has evolved the way it has. She shows how resources have been mobilised, how some citizenship issues have been put on the agenda and how this has progressively enlarged the acquis communautaire as far as EU citizenship is concerned. For this purspose, Wiener analyses the evolution of the discourse of EU political actors on the issues related to citizenship and reconstructs the debates and the difficult path which leads to binding decisions in the field.

The answers she gives to her three questions are worth a discussion. In her view, the construction of EU citizenship is much more than a simple compilation of rights. It is also an identity-construction process. As to the second question, Wiener claims that EU citizenship shares some features with traditional forms of citizenship but there are also some crucial differences stemming from the fact that the EU is not as centralised as states. Thirdly, she claims that the construction of EU citizenship does not entail the end of national identities. It reflects the move towards multiple identities and multiple governance in the global world.

The book is certainly one of the most comprehensive accounts of EU citizenship available. Except the Amsterdam developments, which came after the publication or late in the publication process, everything is there. One could nevertheless regret that the book reads too much like a doctoral thesis which, supposedly, it was. Furthermore, the notion of citizenship practice is not devoid of confusion. I understand it as the use European citizens make of the new set of rights included in EU citizenship: to what extent do they use them and why? This dimension of the construction of citizenship is neglected in Wiener’s work. European citizenship-building is seen exclusively as the matter of what EU politicians say and of what European institutions do. The European citizen seems to be virtually absent in the process. It is also clear that many EU politicians would undoubtedly endorse what Wiener writes. A question then arises: to what extent has she critically deconstructed the official discourse on EU citizenship-building? In other words, to what extent has she reproduced it and therefore given a scientific legitimacy to a political discourse? Lastly, Wiener identifies identity as a central element of citizenship but the notion of identity is at least as vague as that of citizenship. An explicit theoretical account of identity would have been welcome in the volume. But despite these reservations, the reader is struck both by the quality and the quantity of work, which has resulted in this important book in the fields of citizenship studies and of European studies.