What Kind of Citizen for Europe?

• Main Author: Stéphane Caporal
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Danubius University 2010-07-01
• Series: Acta Universitatis Danubius: Juridica
• Subjects: human rights; sovereignty; citizenship
• Online Access: http://journals.univ-danubius.ro/index.php/juridica/article/viewFile/558/509

The citizen is characterized by its affiliation to a democratic order, but we need to know if this order allows building citizenship. If the political participation manifests legally the right to citizenship, for Alain Touraine, a citizen is "to feel the responsibility for the smooth functioning of institutions that obey the human rights and which it allows a representation of ideas and interests.”, which is a lot, but it does not imply a moral or national conscience. The accuracy on human rights raises a question on its epistemological status: is it a socially acceptable condition for nowadays or is it a substantial condition of concept’s existence, in which case we should believe that the Greeks andthe Romans knew what a citizen was.