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Can “vital interests” of the state serve as a legal criterion for a Migration Authority to strip the nationality of citizens with dual citizenship on security and organized crime grounds? For several years, Sweden has faced significant problems with gang-related organized crime, including multiple shootings involving minors. This problem, combined with security tensions across Europe and a much stricter migration policy in Sweden, has led to the latest legislative proposal to revoke citizenship, which threatens Sweden’s vital interests. But the legal standard of seriously damaging “Sweden’s vital interests” remains very broad and thus highly susceptible to misuse. Moreover, arguably, only criminal law – with all the constitutional safeguards it affords – should carry out such a sanction. Regardless of the general trend in Europe toward similar considerations and relatively lenient international case law, there are broader questions about the practical implications of revoking citizenship that warrant discussion. For example, it may be difficult or even impossible for an individual to rescind the “other” citizenship, depending on the dual (or multiple) nationality in question.

The Proposal

The new legislative proposal in Sweden (see SOU 2026:21 and the Government bill) would allow the revocation of citizenship from individuals with dual or multiple nationalities in certain circumstances. The law proposal focuses on individuals who obtained their nationality through fraud, threat, or deception, or those with dual nationality involved in very severe criminality. I focus here on the latter: the withdrawal of Swedish citizenship from dual- or multiple-nationality perpetrators. These crimes include terrorism, murder, high treason, espionage, as well as genocide and war crimes. The legislative proposal also suggests that serious crimes committed by, and in the context of, organized crime and gang criminality that seriously threaten Sweden’s vital interests could constitute grounds for revocation, with particular focus on gang leaders. This could be seen as part of Sweden’s broader move to combat the recent surge of organized crime and gang shootings and their spread to new forms of victimization.

According to Justice Minister Strömmer, a supporter of these proposals, “violent extremism, state actors acting in a hostile manner towards Sweden, as well as systemic and organized crime” are core problems for Sweden. The focus on citizenship follows a trend in many other European countries. Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Austria, Germany, Finland, and the UK have already revoked citizenship in cases of dual nationality involving fraud in obtaining citizenship or serious criminality and security threats, such as terrorism. This European trend is often referred to as the securitization of citizenship and raises several fundamental questions about the revocation of citizenship and its implications. If revocation of citizenship in cases of dual or multiple nationality could be accepted in extreme cases, it arguably should be carried out within the framework of criminal law and the constitutional safeguards it affords, rather than through administrative procedure.

The proposed legislative revisions require an amendment to the Constitution. They would need to pass a vote in parliament with a simple majority, followed by a general election, and then a second Riksdag vote (the next general election is scheduled for September 13, 2026). Regardless of the election outcome, the proposed changes may become law, as the largest opposition party currently also supports the legislation. The law proposal is suggested to enter into force on 1 January 2027.

The legislative changes should not be seen in isolation but as part of a broader trend toward a “tough on crime” policy, a much stricter migration policy, and stricter rules for attaining Swedish citizenship. The legislative proposal also suggests revising the Swedish Citizenship Act (2001:82). These proposed changes are part of the broader narrative of strengthening the image of the state. For example, there is also a recent controversial law (not discussed in this blog post) that just passed (15 June 2026) to refuse or withdraw a residence permit in cases of serious misconduct, such as failing to follow laws, regulations, and decisions made by authorities, having large debts, or making a living in a dishonest way.

Vital Interests

Certain crimes, in certain contexts – in the legislative proposal, mostly gang violence and organized crime – are deemed so serious that they not only victimize individuals, businesses, etc., but damage or are directed against the country’s vital interests, as well. This includes security threats, as well as large-scale extortion and benefit fraud by organized crime. The current proposal does not define “vital interests,” leaving that to subsequent legislation. It supplies a guideline, referring to “systemhotande” – acts that constitute a serious threat to the national “system” or public order. From a legality perspective and strict construction of criminal law provisions, there may be several problems with the criterion of “vital interests” unless the law clarifies its meaning. According to the legislative proposal, it is necessary to not only include security here, but also crimes conducted by gang criminals who recruit minors to conduct shootings. In addition, the proposal suggests that, depending on the circumstances, extensive criminal attacks against authorities and even large-scale, systematic welfare crime can be covered by the term. There is currently no precise definition of organized crime in Swedish law. Therefore, there is an additional legislative proposal to include a definition of a criminal gang/organized crime in the Penal Code (Brottsbalken). While it is true that a state’s vital interests can shift over time, the very idea of “vital interests” is, as noted, vulnerable to overly broad interpretations and must be strictly construed and subjected to a proportionality assessment.

Citizenship Revocation Under ECHR and EU Law

According to international law, individuals who would become stateless cannot be stripped of their nationality, as stipulated in the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, and the 1997 European Convention on Nationality. The Swedish law proposal does not aim to render anyone stateless. It applies only to persons who are also citizens of other countries. Nevertheless, revoking citizenship is obviously an extreme measure, even as a result of crimes that seriously harm a country’s “vital interests,” as the law decrees.

EU and ECHR case law offer little guidance on when someone poses a sufficient threat to security to justify the revocation of citizenship. In Wiener Landesregierung (Case C-118/20), the CJEU held that traffic offenses are not sufficiently serious to warrant revocation of citizenship and that such a measure would not be proportionate to the gravity of the offenses committed. More specifically, the CJEU stressed that the concepts of public policy and public security must be interpreted strictly, and that their scope cannot be determined unilaterally by Member States without being subject to review by EU institutions. In the Rottman case (Case C-135/08), the CJEU held that a Member State may “withdraw from a citizen of the Union the nationality of that State acquired by naturalization when that nationality was obtained by deception, on condition that the decision to withdraw observes the principle of proportionality.”

Moreover, in the context of the ECHR, in the El Aroud and Soughir case, the ECtHR held that the deprivation of citizenship from a perpetrator with dual citizenship convicted on terrorism-related charges fell within the authorities’ wide discretion and that the measures in question had been implemented in line with what is “necessary in a democratic society”. Likewise, in the Johansen case on the compatibility of citizenship revocation with Article 8 ECHR on private life, the ECtHR first examined whether the decision was taken in accordance with the law and not arbitrary, and secondly, whether it constituted an interference with private life under Article 8 ECHR. Johansen, who had dual citizenship and was born in Denmark, had left Denmark and joined ISIS. He had also lived in Tunisia for shorter periods prior to joining the terrorist organization. The ECHR examined whether the interference was proportionate and “democratic society”, necessary in a and concluded that it was. The ECHR does not, however, require states to use criminal law as the mechanism for revoking citizenship (K2 v. United Kingdom). Yet, a parallel track of having first a conviction and then an administrative decision can result in double punishment and a lack of proportionality.

Both the ECHR and EU law leave a wide margin of discretion to Member States.

Revocation As Punishment

As Gibney explains, modern denationalization relies mainly on administrative law, which has fewer legal safeguards than criminal law. In the securitization literature, the revocation of citizenship is understood as a form of securitization, in which individuals are treated as security threats, often in the context of the fight against terrorism. Maclin stresses that, in crimmigration scholarship, “denationalization extends the functionality of immigration law in advancing current penal and national security objectives through expulsion,” and that it operates without the same constitutional safeguards as in criminal law. Citizenship revocation is closely tied to migration law. As Gibney expresses it, the power to rule on citizenship is at “the apex of state power”. Shai Lavi has argued that, because citizenship revocation can be justified only in cases of dual or multiple citizenship, it can be justified only as punishment, not as an exclusion from a community. He emphasizes that revoking citizenship should only be justified by an egalitarian view of citizenship and not in cases where it targets minorities or is used in a racist way. Lavi argues that under certain circumstances, “revocation of citizenship can be justified in an egalitarian, self-governing, and deliberative democracy,” but only if subject to the stricter safeguards inherent in criminal law. To remind, ECHR went a different way: rather than a criminal sanction, revocation of citizenship can be deemed a separation between polity and offending subject, contingent on the subject not becoming stateless.

No one can be made stateless, and no actual proposal exists to make persons stateless by revoking citizenship. Still, most of the literature on the securitization of citizenship and the debate on counterterrorism law concerns the question of statelessness. Once that problem is eliminated from discourse (by restricting the doctrine of revocation only to multinationals), the question becomes: Is there an inalienable right to a specific citizenship, as opposed to the right to hold citizenship? In what extreme cases could this right be revoked for persons with multiple citizenships, thus not rendering anyone stateless but excluding them from a political community they have seriously offended? In Scandinavian history, outlawry was the severest penalty next to the death penalty that could be handed out. In contemporary Sweden, all citizens aged 18 and over are allowed to vote, including those who have committed a serious crime and been sentenced to prison. But not all other nationalities are democratic states, so revoking someone’s Swedish nationality may de facto exclude that person from a political community, even in cases of dual nationality. There are many broader questions that need to be answered here. For example, can the “other” citizenship always be rescinded by the individual, and if not, does it not create inequality in how the law is applied in practice? It is clear that the principle of proportionality is key here, so that the law respects family life (Article 8 ECHR) and that there are sufficient ties to the other country for any revocation.

It is, however, a type of law in force in the neighbouring Nordic countries (and not applicable if anyone would become stateless). In short, in Finland, revocation could be used in cases of citizenship fraud or serious crime such as high treason, spying, and terrorism. In Norway, revocation could be triggered in cases of citizenship fraud and in cases of severe harm to vital national interests. Finally, in Denmark, revocation could be actualized in cases of citizenship fraud and crimes against vital state interests, such as terrorism, high treason, and gang-related criminality.

Concluding Remarks

There are some valid points in the proposed law that address extremely severe criminality and security threats that could seriously harm the state’s vital interests. But there are also dangers, as outlined above, and these “details” could make the law unduly difficult in practice. While Sweden has a serious problem with mafia-like violent gang criminality that challenges the law’s monopoly on force and basic state structures, the criterion of serious harm to vital interests is very broad and vulnerable to misuse and will require serious attention in legislative drafting. While revocation of citizenship in extreme cases, where criminals abuse the trust and basic structures of the social contract, could be justified for people with dual or multiple nationality under certain circumstances, it should be the criminal court that decides on revocation as a punishment, in accordance with constitutional safeguards. The Migration Authority should then be responsible for investigating whether a person can actually be extradited in accordance with the principle of non-refoulement.

The post Sweden’s Vital Interests appeared first on Verfassungsblog.

C-769/22 Commission v Hungary marks the remarkable ascent of the European society discourse. What until very recently was a mere political slogan and academic postulate has now been presented as hard law (see paras 495 and 554 of the judgment). Over the past years, the notion of European society has spread quickly from the pages of academic journals to the offices of the European Commission’s Legal Service at Rue de la Loi in Brussels and now, too, to the Kirchberg plateau. The transfer of ideas from an academic to an institutional context is a common process but also a deeply political one. It matters what ideas are adopted, whose ideas are heard, and to what ends they are deployed.

The academic project of European society contains a variety of approaches, many of which adopt a realist perspective to the study of EU law. The institutional adaptation of the European society discourse, however, draws on the work of several idealist scholars who reconceptualise integration through law as a process of society-construction. In this vision, the text of Article 2 TEU postulates the existence of a European society as a collective singular to which the foundational values in Article 2 TEU are attributed and from which their authority derives. It presents the Court of Justice as speaking in the name of a European society, thereby transforming the social fabric in Europe, and even reconstituting it in a more emancipatory vein.

A closer look, however, reveals that there is little transformative or emancipatory potential in the Court’s Article 2 TEU case law or its invocation of European society. Beneath the rhetoric of transformation, the institutional adaptation of the society discourse is above all conservative in nature, seeking to protect the authority of the EU and its legal order against detracting Member States. The hope that the Court will deploy Article 2 TEU to pursue a transformative agenda is unfounded (as is the fear that the Article 2 TEU case law is too radical). Rather, the notion of European society is instrumental in legitimising the EU’s legal-political status quo.

European Society Between the Real and the Ideal

The rise of the European society discourse is the latest fashion in EU legal academia. The concept is now regularly found in journal articles, books and workshops (it has even become the subject of a Verfassungblog symposium, I hasten to add). But that does not mean European society denotes a uniform or shared meaning. In fact, under the umbrella of European society, one finds completely different practices to the study of EU law. Using a broad brush, one can distinguish between a more realist approach (found in the work of Loïc Azoulai and others) and an idealist one (initiated by Armin von Bogdandy). Both talk about European society, but each means a very different thing.

The realist take on European society is informed by law in context approach as well as the recent proliferation of empirical legal studies in EU law. It studies the law not (just) as a system of norms, but (also) as a social phenomenon and practice. This approach takes as its starting point that the EU and its law are insufficiently attuned to (or even disconnected from) the social. The appeal to society forms an attempt to bring EU law’s reality deficit into focus and draw out its normative consequences. From this perspective, EU law lacks the concepts and tools to accurately capture lived experiences or translate social conflicts into a legal form. Hence, realists study colonial legacies, marginalised groups, and relations of domination and exploitation in contemporary Europe. While these studies might attempt to reconnect EU law and society, they are just as likely to point to the limits of the law as an instrument of social change.

The idealists, in contrast, seek to doctrinally reconstruct EU law in light of Article 2 TEU. Its starting point is the notion of society as referenced in the text of Article 2 TEU and the value case law of the Court of Justice. The focus is therefore on studying legal text and developing novel doctrinal arguments. For example, its proponents conceptualise the common values as the EU’s constitutional core and reconstruct primary law as a pyramid with Article 2 TEU at the top. From this perspective, the EU’s common values offer a language in which social conflicts should be articulated (thereby assuming that social reality can and must conform to the language of EU law). This approach exhibits great trust in the common values as tools of transformative change, which are presented as an instrument to solve the EU’s democratic shortcomings, create a more substantial EU citizenship, and enhance solidarity with migrants and refugees.

While the realists focus on the social, the idealists prioritise Article 2 TEU. From an institutional perspective, this difference matters. The realist approach is contextual, critical, and, hence, not very practical for institutional purposes. The idealist approach, in contrast, can be easily operationalised, providing arguments that allow institutional actors to mobilise the common values. But it is precisely the proximity to power that undermines the transformative potential of the idealists’ agenda.

Academic Allies and the Legitimation of EU Law

Not all ideas are created equally. This is the key insight of the archival and socio-historical research on the historical formation of EU law. This body of work maps how institutional actors mobilised academic allies to legitimise their constitutional vision of EU law and establish this vision as the common-sense understanding of the Treaties. As such, these studies convincingly show how legal knowledge is not neutral, but inevitably part of discursive struggles about the direction and future of the integration process. In these struggles, not only the quality of the idea matters, but also the social resources that can be mobilised to support one’s argument.

Exactly how the notion of European society circulated among academic and institutional circles is for future historians and sociologist to discover, but there is no doubt that Armin von Bogdandy’s The Emergence of European Society through Public Law plays a key role. This book forms the most elaborate effort to reconstruct EU law in light of the concept of European society to date. Moreover, as a Director of the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, von Bogdandy has both the network and the financial means to promote his society frame as the new ‘common sense’ of the EU legal discipline (see e.g. here, here and here). This might help to explain why his arguments are picked up by the lawyers in the Commission, Advocate General Ćapeta, and the plenary of the Court of Justice. These institutions seem quite receptive to the idea that a European society is constituted by the very laws that those who work in these institutions uphold and create.

The attractiveness of the society frame is, no doubt, also that it continues a long tradition of grand narratives that appeal to the inherent ideals of the Treaties to justify the authority of EU law. For Judge Pierre Pescatore, the Treaties contained the inherent telos of a common market and a political union; for Commission President Walter Hallstein, the Treaties, at their core, formed a system that would regulate inter-State relations on the European continent through law rather than force; for the editors of the Integration Through Law volumes, the Treaties possessed an inner ethos that expressed a new conception of postnational citizenship. Each of these influential accounts of European legal integration explains the authority of the law in a circular and self-referential manner: the authority of EU law derives from the market, system, or postnational community as constituted by EU law.

Such self-referential narratives have a legitimating function. They ground the “authority of the law on law itself” and anchor “the legitimacy of the EU in the authority of the law”, as Mendes accurately put it. The European society frame performs the same function. It derives the authority of EU law from an abstract and idealised notion of European society, while simultaneously positing that this society is constituted through Article 2 TEU and the Court’s value-based case law. This discourse thereby provides a self-sustaining justification for the authority of EU law that obfuscates the question how EU law is democratically authorised. It is precisely what makes this notion so attractive: a society has no will and does not speak with a single voice, not even metaphorically (in contrast to a people, nation, or State). From this perspective, the democracy of European society inevitable operates via “compromise hammered out within its institutions.”

The ideal of European society thus coincides with the EU and its institutional machinery in Brussels and Luxembourg. It offers a new vocabulary to describe the EU’s legal-institutional framework as it already is. Von Bogdandy is explicit in this regard, stating that his account presumes that “legal structures express social structures”. This means that if the EU treaties say there is a society, such a society exists; or if the Treaties state that the EU is democratic, it follows that the EU is, in fact, a democracy. If one takes this line of reasoning to its logical conclusion even the trilogue process appears as a “significant democratic innovation”.

The starting premise therefore deprives von Bogdandy’s approach to European society of any transformative potential. This is why a realist approach to European society rejects this premise. Instead, it draws out the contrast between a highly idealistic values discourse (legal structures) and the far more gloomy lived reality of political marginalisation, economic inequality, and societal alienation on the European continent (social structures). The great risk of speculating about European society in the abstract is that it all too easily obscures the actual social circumstances which EU law produces.

Conservative, Not Transformative

The paradox of the idealist approach to European society is that it is inherently conservative. While it proposes novel concepts and creative reinterpretations, these serve highly traditional ends, namely, to protect the authority of EU law from Member States that challenge the EU. The mobilisation of Article 2 TEU is primarily motivated by the goal to intervene in backsliding Member States (but, as we saw in the Maltese citizenship case, is not limited to those States). It would be a mistake to consider such an expansion of EU powers as transformative. The Court of Justice’s foundational case law has always been geared towards enabling the EU’s exercise of public authority, rather than constraining the EU institutions. If anything, the Court’s Article 2 TEU case law confirms the persistence of this enabling-logic, which I have described elsewhere as “a structural bias towards the very structure of EU legal order”.

Illustrative is the argument that the Court’s President Lenaerts and Gutiérrez-Fons made in response to my claim, namely, that the EU’s constitution is not an “empty shell” because the values “permeate throughout the constitutional structure of the EU”. In their understanding, the foundational values are expressed through the EU’s legal framework, rather than forming a normative benchmark against which that framework is assessed. The way in which the common values are conceptualised as legal norms thus risks precluding their application vis-à-vis acts of the EU institutions or the laws they adopt.

Of course, the outcome in C-769/22 Commission v Hungary is commendable: defending the rights of the LGBTQI community against discriminatory and degrading treatment by the Hungarian State. But this is a single judgment, against a government that already was the “pariah” of the EU family, and in which sixteen Member State governments endorsed the enforcement of the EU’s foundational values. In these circumstances, it is far too optimistic to contemplate “a new constitutional horizon”. This is not the beginning of a novel type of constitutional jurisprudence that will render the EU and its Member States more responsive to democratic demands, solidary between rich and poor, or respectful of the human dignity of minorities and migrants. Rather we are witnessing the mobilisation of new discursive means (European society) to defend very traditional ends (the constitutional orthodoxy).

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In its recent judgment No. 63/2026, the Italian Constitutional Court (ItCC) acknowledged the existence of a European society grounded on the values enshrined in Article 2 TEU. The judgment appears to be the first explicit reference by a constitutional court of an EU Member State to the emergence of a European society. Importantly, the decision was already taken on 11 March 2026, but only published on 30 April 2026, after the CJEU delivered its judgment on Commission v. Hungary on 21 April 2026. Hence, the ItCC could not rely on Commission v. Hungary. Read together, the two judgments point to a constitutional convergence between national constitutional courts and the CJEU around Article 2 TEU as the basis of European society.

Judgment No. 63/2026 concerned the constitutionality of recent legislation restricting access to Italian citizenship for descendants of Italians abroad. The passage on European society is an obiter dictum. Yet, that does not undermine its relevance. In fact, I argue that it is precisely because the Court was not required to rely on the concept to decide the case that this explicit invocation is noteworthy. In the following, I first set out the legislative background and the ItCC’s decision. I then turn to the obiter dictum on European society, arguing that its real significance lies in the question it raises about belonging: Who belongs to European society? Finally, I briefly draw some conclusions.

Italian Legislation on Citizenship

The applicants, Venezuelan citizens descending from an Italian who had emigrated to Venezuela in the 19^th century, claimed recognition of their Italian citizenship before the Civil Court in Turin. However, following the amendment of the Italian citizenship legislation (Law No. 91/1992) by Decree-Law No. 36/2025 (DL 36/25, converted with modifications into Law No. 74/2025), they were no longer entitled to such recognition.

Italian citizenship has traditionally been governed by ius sanguinis: as a general rule, citizenship is transmitted through filiation by either parent. Other routes to citizenship, such as naturalization or acquisition by another provision of law (e.g. marriage), play a more limited role (see here). Until the 2025 reform, Italian legislation set no further requirements for the transmission of citizenship via filiation. In practice, it allowed unlimited citizenship transmission.

DL 36/25, as converted into L 74/25, introduced significant limitations. According to this reform, a person born abroad – even before the entry into force of such legislation – who holds another citizenship is deemed never to have acquired Italian citizenship, unless one of the following conditions is satisfied: that person has submitted (a) an administrative or (b) a judicial application to the competent authority no later than 11:59 p.m., 27 March 2025, Rome time; (c) a first- or second-degree ascendant holds, or held at the time of death, exclusively Italian citizenship; (d) a parent or adoptive parent has been a resident of Italy for at least two consecutive years following the acquisition of Italian citizenship and prior to the date of birth or adoption of the child (for a critical analysis, see here, here, and here).

This reform severely limits the possibility for Italian descendants to be recognized for their citizenship status, especially in cases a) and b). Most notably, it does so retrospectively. DL 36/25 was published on 28 March 2025, yet it required that the administrative or judicial application for Italian citizenship must be initiated by 27 March 2025. Against this background, the Turin Court asked the ItCC to rule on the compatibility of the 2025 reform with several constitutional provisions, also in relation to European and international law, invoking the principles of equality, reasonableness, and legal certainty.

The ItCC’s Decision

The ItCC declared the questions raised by the Turin judge partly inadmissible and partly unfounded. In substance, it held that DL 36/2025 fully complies with the citizenship model rooted in the Italian Constitution. According to the ItCC, such model conceives of the “people as a community bound by a genuine link among its members” – in terms of “solidarity, mutual rights and duties,  commitment to the progress of society, and shared destinies” (Considerato in diritto, § 8.2.1). The previous legislation departed from that model, as it allowed those who had no genuine link with the Italian community to participate in political decisions concerning that same community. This reasoning bears directly on the position of Italian ‘virtual’ citizens abroad, namely those – between 60 and 80 million people – who, under the previous legislation, could potentially be recognized as citizens by virtue of descent, even in the absence of any genuine link with Italy.

The ItCC found that DL 36/25 left unaffected both the already established citizenship status and proceedings initiated by 27 March 2025. It characterized the reform as corrective in nature and foreseeable while also considering retrospective application necessary to fulfil its purpose (see critically here). As a consequence, the ItCC concluded that the challenged provisions of DL 36/25 balanced in a not unreasonable way the legitimate expectations of the concerned individuals and “the constitutional principle of effectiveness of citizenship” (Cons. dir., § 9.2.4).

The Obiter Dictum on European Society

Why is this judgment relevant for the debate on European society? When assessing the compliance of DL 36/25 with EU law, the ItCC affirmed:

“There must be a coherent relationship between the constitutional framework of national citizenship and the regime of European citizenship … The constitutional principles that contribute to the creation of a genuine link between the citizen and the national community largely overlap with, and in any event are always consistent with, the values listed in Article 2 TEU, which form the basis of ‘European society’. It is precisely this homogeneity of values that allows the same individual to feel both Italian and European at the same time, and to have a dual affiliation: to the Italian people and to ‘European society’.” (Cons. dir., § 8.2.5).

This passage is an obiter dictum: it is neither necessary nor relevant to the ItCC decision of the case. In other words, the ItCC did not need to go in this direction. Yet, it is precisely because the passage is not necessary to the outcome that it is revealing. The ItCC deliberately chose to refer to a European society grounded on Article 2 TEU.

Remarkably, the ItCC places European society alongside the concept of (Italian) people. It does so by moving from the need for coherence between national citizenship and European citizenship, both grounded in homogeneous values, to develop its reasoning on the affiliation of the same individual to both the Italian people and European society. In other words, national citizenship reflects belonging to the Italian people, whereas European citizenship reflects belonging to European society. In this construction, Member State citizenship functions as the legal gateway to European society. However, this reading also reveals a possible limitation. If European society is equated with the aggregate of EU citizens, the concept risks becoming too narrow. It leaves aside, for example, third-country nationals who live on EU territory, participate in its social and legal space, and may have developed a qualified link with it.

Belonging to the Italian People and to European Society

The ItCC’s decision on European society resonates with the CJEU’s wording in Commission v. Hungary. Although the two cases arise in different contexts, they share a common constitutional vocabulary. The CJEU affirmed that values enshrined in Article 2 TEU “define the very identity of the Union as a common legal order … of a society” (§§ 549 and 551; for comments, see here, here, and here). For its part, the ItCC affirmed that the democratic order is based “on a ‘singular plural’, on a ‘collective self’,” namely the people, which “presupposes a link with a territory … and the sharing of certain material principles that create a sense of common belonging, of collective identity” (Cons. dir., § 8.2.2). And such constitutional principles are, according to the ItCC, homogeneous with the values enshrined in Article 2 TEU, allowing the individual to be affiliated both to a national people and to European society. The two judgments nonetheless differ in the collective singular they refer to: the Italian people in the ItCC’s decision; the European society in Commission v. Hungary.

The ItCC stresses the substantive dimension underlying citizenship: not merely a formal status, but the expression of a genuine link between the individual and the community. The ItCC places its reasoning alongside that of Commission v Malta (see here and here). The latter case relied on different premises, as it concerned transactional naturalization granted by the Maltese government in exchange for predetermined payments or investments. Yet, the ItCC deduced a common thread between that case and its decision (see critically here), insofar as citizenship cannot be reduced to a purely formal status detached from an effective relationship between the individual and the State.

The genuine link argument thus shows what the Italian judgment, as well as its obiter dictum, are actually about belonging to both a national community (the people) and to a European society. And the understanding of who belongs is crucial for the understanding of who is part of European society – European citizens, third-country nationals living in the EU and participating in its society, or even those who have not developed any genuine link with it.

Conclusion

Armin von Bogdandy argued that by embracing the concept of a European society, the ItCC does not merely acknowledge a trend that is already underway, but actively drives it forward, contributing to the development of European constitutional law. At this stage, however, this statement might be too optimistic. It remains to be seen whether Judgment No. 63/2026 will have a lasting impact or whether its reference to European society will remain isolated.

Commission v. Hungary currently provides a stronger basis for the consolidation of the concept of European society. There, the reference to a society grounded in Article 2 TEU is connected to the judicial enforceability of Union values. By contrast, the ItCC’s reference is more indirect: European society is invoked to argue for the coherence between the constitutional framework of national citizenship and the regime of EU citizenship.

However, the ItCC’s obiter dictum is worth taking seriously. It shows a convergence in the constitutional vocabulary used by the CJEU and national constitutional courts. It also brings to the surface a question that remains unresolved: Who belongs to European society? Is it limited to EU citizens, or does it go beyond, e.g., including those who reside in the EU and have developed a qualified link with it? The ItCC seems to point in the first direction. The judgment is therefore significant because it exposes the limits of answering the question of belonging through citizenship alone.

I am sincerely grateful to Armin von Bogdandy, Paolo Mazzotti, Jasper Siegert, and Silvia Steininger for their helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

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