Justin Lindeboom

Empirical Assessment of the Quality of Nationalities: The Quality of Nationality Index

Contemporary thinking about nationality is surrounded by three persistent mythologies. First, all nationalities are equal. Second, there is a direct correlation between the power and size of the economy of a country and the quality of its nationality. Third, there is a correlation between the geographical scope of the rights granted by a nationality and the territory of the conferring state. Looking beyond the subjective feelings one may have towards one’s nationality, the widely diverging quality of nationalities can in fact be measured. In the Quality of Nationality Index (QNI), which this article introduces and discusses, an attempt has been made to develop and deploy a reliable and straightforward methodology to measure objectively the value of having a particular nationality, which would not be perception-based. QNI is used to refute all the three mythologies above as unhelpful and misleading. Nationalities are far from equal, as least not under the assumption that the level of expected welfare, education, healthcare, life chances, and global travel and settlement opportunities matter.

Pluralism through its denial: the success of EU citizenship

EU citizenship is derived from the nationalities of the Member States and thus seemingly obeys international law’s ‘anything goes’ pluralism: who is a citizen is for the states to decide. In practice, EU citizenship has effectively destroyed the ties between citizenship and state territory, offering virtually unlimited access to rights far beyond the conferring state’s territory. Since none of the Member States will be willing to give up the claim of sovereignty in nationality matters, holding on to the ‘full sovereignty in citizenship matters’ mantra, access to EU citizenship is paradoxically bound to be pluralist in nature precisely for the most antipluralist reasons. Thus, as part of a perpetual ‘clash of legal orders’, EU citizenship is a crucial federal denominator, shaping the ever-fluid vertical boundaries of competence.

Taking the European Court of Justice up on its Name

One cannot agree more with the editors of Europe’s Justice Deficit? that the EU is capable of causing both justice and injustice. The question “how to steer Europe in the direction of justice” they raise, however, is of frightening complexity. As multiple contributors to Europe’s Justice Deficit? recognise, Jeremy Waldron was right to note that “there are many of us, and we disagree about justice”[1] – and the rich plurality of contributions to the volume surely underlines this.