INTRODUCTION

Although the main themes of this book concern the EU-15, or “older” countries of the European Union, this chapter extends the analysis to the group of countries that I refer to as the “Accession-12.” The EU now consists of twenty-seven member-states, as ten countries – Cyprus and Malta, along with post-communist Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia – became members in 2004, and Bulgaria and Romania joined them in 2007. Given how recently they entered the EU, it is too early to analyze questions of continuity and change in the citizenship policies of the Accession-12, particularly for the countries that were in the post-communist bloc, which until the past few years faced lower – or certainly very different – pressures for immigration. As a result of these distinct experiences, most of the countries in this group find themselves in a situation very different from that of the EU-15. Nonetheless, given the reality of the now considerably expanded EU, it would be negligent to ignore these countries, and it is important to explore their current citizenship policies in order to understand the full EU picture.

Unlike most of the countries in the EU-15, where the topic of citizenship has generated tremendous interest in a vast (and growing) scholarly literature, the citizenship policies of the recent accession countries have received very little attention to date. Few sources are available, and most of them are either outdated or very narrow.