of who did and who did not belong to the European Community. By excluding TCNs from the free movement provisions, Kostakopoulou (2001: 184–5) goes on, the prospects were also thwarted for the institution of criteria other than nationality, or formal citizenship in a member state, for an individual’s belonging to and membership in the Community.
In addition to this, it was also decided early on that internal migrants (i.e. member-state citizens) should have preference over external migrants to employment in the Community—a rule that was upheld in the first stage completion of the free movement scheme in 1968 (Swann 1988: 161). The rule was foremost reflective of an Italian interest to facilitate as much as possible the outflow of its labor surplus to the other member states. Initially this was met with opposition from the West German government, which, owing to its large labor demand, wanted a free hand to recruit labor also from outside the Community. But since it soon became apparent that the intra-Community labor migration would come nowhere near meeting West German labor demands, Bonn’s requests were never challenged; thus, the conflicting Italian and West German interests would not have to come to a head. It should be noted though, that the Commission was a warm advocate of these preferential rights for member-state citizens, and for long it clung to a conviction that these rights would indeed impact intra-Community labor migration positively in relation to external migration (Collins 1975: 104–5, 114–5).
As we shall discuss further ahead, the dualized order is still in place, although in a slightly modified form, and since the mid-1980s its ever more conspicuous consequences have been the subject of an equally ever-growing debate (see e.g. Ireland 1996: 136).
Crisis and a Search for Alternatives
The years spanning the late 1960s to the mid-1970s are often pinpointed as the starting point for a period of structural crisis and transformation for continental Western European models of capitalism. A general economic downturn, triggered initially by skyrocketing oil prices and characterized by mounting stagflation, growing unemployment, and decreasing wage shares in national income, ignited a fierce ideological battle between monetarists and Keynesians on how to best manage the changing conditions of the West European political economy (Boyer 1990).
This battle was further complicated by the changing structural conditions of the global political economy, as continental European states were pressed to formulate policy responses to the U.S. and U.K. pole position in abandoning the international compromise of embedded liberalism through “the liberalization of independent finance from Keynesian controls” already in the late-1960s (Holman and van der Pijl 1996: 63; see also Helleiner 1994). Heightened capital mobility and the “vocabulary” of “interdependence and competitiveness” (Cox 1992: 27) that accompanied it raised uncertainties about the future sustainability of continental Europe’s models of welfare capitalism and their extensive social citizenship regimes. All in all, as Stockhammer (2005–6: 195–6) notes, it is important to emphasise that the actual effects of the crisis of the 1970s were experienced unevenly by the various social classes within Europe. The rising tide of joblessness and wage stagnation can indeed be regarded as nothing short of a crisis for Europe’s working classes; one which they have yet to recover from. But for the capitalist classes, the downturn of the 1970s is best thought of as a temporary lull in performance whereby brief and modest dips in profit incomes were soon restored to their post-war “Golden Age” levels.
The general weakening of Western Europe’s overall economic performance in this period also contributed to the activation of the Community-level as a forum for new discussions on how to meet and amend the crisis. Much of this discussion would center on social issues, on the future of welfare, and the question of citizenship (Hoskyns 1996: 79; Williams 1994: 182). The initiative also formed an integral part of an effort to increase popular support for European integration and, as it also was expressed, to put a “human face” on the European Community (Meehan 1993: 70–2; Williams 1994: 182). In the aftermath of the student revolts of 1968 and on the initiative of Willy Brandt’s West German government, the Community launched grand plans for a “European Social Union” and a set of social issues was placed on the agenda (Carchedi 2001: 240; Meehan 1993: 70–1). At the Paris European Council in 1972, Community leaders gave their support for a strengthening of Community social policy, and two years later the first ever Community Social Action Program was adopted (see Council EC 1974). The program was extensive and called for action to eliminate unemployment, improve living and working conditions, reinforce employee codetermination and gender equality in the labor market. But the program also indicated a new approach in that intra-Community migrants no longer made up the sole target group for supranational social policy. Community social policy was from then on also to target the unemployed, women, the disabled, youth, and extra-Community migrants.
The Formation of a Discourse on Citizenship at the Supranational Level
The new social initiatives were also to trigger the first explicit discussions as regards a Community or “European” citizenship. Although “Citizenship of the Union,” or a formal EU citizenship, was not to become part of the treaty until 1993—with the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty—the idea of creating such a citizenship for the EEC and subsequently the EC had been discussed off and on for many years (Wiener 1997: 537–8). References to “the citizens of Europe,” “Community citizens,” and a “Citizens’ Europe” were thus frequent long before the legal category “citizen of the Union” had been established.6
The first tangible initiatives toward the creation of the present EU citizenship were taken at the Paris summit between the Community’s heads of state and government in 1974, where a working group was set up for the purpose of studying what was referred to as “special rights” for member states’ citizens (CEC 1993b: 1; see also CEC 1996a: 5). Prior to the 1974 summit the Copenhagen foreign ministers’ meeting in 1973 had put forth a “Declaration on European identity” that (although it did not bring up the concept of a Community citizenship in the explicit) incorporated a discourse that to some extent would fit subsequent articulations of “European citizenship.” Among other things, the “Declaration on European identity” spoke of the urgent need to focus on the shared “heritage” and “to ensure the survival of the civilization” which the Community countries and the potential new members were said to have in common (CEC 1973).
In 1976 the Tindemans Report7 to the European Council would develop and expand on these interventions and link them directly to the idea of a “Citizens’ Europe.” Under this heading the Tindemans Report argued that in order for the Community to “be close to its citizens” the “values which are their common heritage” had to be safeguarded (Tindemans 1976: 26). It also explicated that “we,” the peoples of the European Community, “must build a type of society which is ours alone and which reflects the values which are the heritage and the common creation of our peoples”; a society “which respects the basic values of our civilization” (Tindemans 1976: 12).
But the grounding of a “European citizenship” in these self-assured views on heritage and civilization was only part of the story. Given its favorable inclination toward social reform during these years (Hoskyns 1996: 78–83; Hantrais 1995: 1, 5; Rossilli 1999), the Community also included social and economic issues in its discussion of citizenship. In the 1976 Tindemans report, for instance, the goal of full employment together with ideas of economic and industrial democracy were discussed as part of the citizenship agenda (see Hoskyns 1996: 78–83).8 As the powers over economic policy gradually moved to transnational arenas, it was argued, “this problem should be solved at the European level by increasing worker participation in the management, control or profits of business” (Tindemans 1976: 25). The “security of the workforce, . . . and their participation in company decisions and company profits” were seen by the Report as policy objectives to be managed at the “European level” in order to “restore to us at Union level that element of protection and control of our society which is progressively slipping from the grasp of State authority due to the nature of the problems and the internationalization of social life” (Tindemans 1976: 24, 28). “[E]conomic and social rights,”
