Introduction

Abstract

In 2013 the European Union (EU) launched the European Year of Citizens to highlight the rights that are associated with EU citizenship and to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the promulgation of those rights in the Maastricht Treaty. The selection of this theme was inspired in part by a 2010 Eurobarometer survey, which had shown that EU citizens’ understanding of their rights was still low (Eurobarometer, 2010a). Turnout for the 2009 European Parliament (EP) elections had also been disappointing, suggesting once again that EU citizens had little interest in exercising their rights, or at least their electoral ones. And while the Official Decision for this European Year does not mention it explicitly (European Parliament and the European Council, 2012), the EP and Council representatives that issued this decision cannot have been unaware of the ongoing economic and political crisis engulfing the EU, and are likely to have been concerned about the potential implications for citizen’s attitudes towards European integration.