Article 8: Citizenship of the Union, citizen rights and duties
(today amendment for article 8 of the Constitution as proposed by the Convention)
English version

1. Definition

Every national of a Member State shall be a citizen of the Union. Citizenship of the Union shall be additional to national citizenship; it shall not replace it. All citizens of the Union, women and men, shall be equal before the law.

Persons, legally residing on the territory of the Union since a significant time and who have integrated into the local community of their residence, can apply for citizenship of the Member State to which the place of residence belongs.

2. Citizen rights and duties (1)

EU citizenship consists of the following additional rights and duties.

Citizens of the Union can enjoy the following additional rights:

• the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States;
• the right to vote and to stand as a candidate in all elections in the Member State of residence under the same conditions as nationals of that State; (2)
• the right to enjoy, in the territory of a third country in which the Member State of which they are a national is not represented, the protection of the diplomatic and consular authorities of any Member State on the same conditions as the nationals of that State;
• the right to petition the European Parliament, to apply to the Ombudsman, and to write to the institutions and advisory bodies of the Union in any of the Union's languages and to obtain a reply in the same language.

Exercising these citizen rights, and, due to the fact that the Union is by definition a multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-national community, the citizen's duties consists, in particular, of respecting and personally applying the following universal principles:

• The one who travels or works on the territory of the Union has to accept the legal and linguistic provisions that are applied at the place concerned. (Principle of accepting the present status of legal conditions)
• The one who moves his residence into another municipality within the territory of the Union has to recognise and respect the legal and linguistic provisions of the chosen place of residence. (Territorial principle)
• The one who stands as a candidate for elections, especially for local elections, has to show that he or she has integrated, at least, into the linguistic framework of the place of his residence or of the circumscription for which he or she is standing for. (Principles of integration)
• The one who has been elected has to acknowledge and to respect, in particular, in local and small communities, the public traditions in culture, language(s) and religion, and, has to accept the fact that the public heritage cannot be subject of revision by others, except the case that the concerned cultural, linguistic or religious group itself wants to change its traditions: (Principle of safeguarding public heritage in culture, language or religion)

3. The citizen's language rights and duties in relation to the Institutions of the Union (3)

In his personal relationship with an Institution or Authority of the Union (with the administration or with an official representative) as well as in his function as an official political mandatee at the level of the Union, the citizen can use one of the official languages of the Union, An eventual need for translation or interpretation lies in the responsibility of the concerned institution of the Union.

In his professional relationship with an Institution or Authority of the Union, the citizen has to accept the professional requirements of the concerned institutional body of the Union, in particular, as to the working language(s). Without prejudice to the institutional autonomy of each Institution, each of them has to organise its internal communication according to criteria like equality, rationality, efficiency and good administration by trying to keep eventual language discrimination of staff members of different mother tongues as small as possible, and this, in particular, as long as an efficient non-discriminatory solution in internal communication has not been found or decided.

In all those fields in which a staff member is exercising his citizen rights (like applying or appealing), he or she can use one of the official languages of the Union.

4. The additional rights and duties

The additional rights and duties of EU citizenship shall be exercised according to the general and universal principle: "Treat your neighbour in that way as you want to be treated by him in the same situation!"(Kant)

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(1) As amendments of other groups, this paragraph was enlarged to duties in form of following universal principles

(2) This amendment is the logic consequence of the principle "non-discrimination on grounds of nationality"; but article 42 of the Charter has to be amended in the same sense.

(3) These language rights and duties are specific civic rights and duties of the EU citizen; they shall inform the citizen about the difference between external and internal communication rights (fundamental communication rights and professional communication rights); the formulation lets any future language solution within the Institutions open. It was mentioned that this aspect might be included in a special protocol instead in this article.