Increasingly some European Union (“EU”) Member States are undertaking practices to revoke or refuse nationality and thus EU citizenship, yet some of these practices are unlawful. It does not seem correct that a Member State’s unlawful act would have the result of denying an individual EU citizenship, but in principle EU Member States are the gatekeepers to EU citizenship. This Article will question the impact of measures denying nationality on EU citizenship, and conclude that, when an EU Member State unlawfully denies nationality, the person can nonetheless still acquire EU citizenship.
Whether a person acquires the nationality of the state largely falls within the discretion of the state, and international law plays little role. This practice is true for both acquisition and withdrawal of nationality, although those two processes have slightly different rules. In general, the revocation of nationality is not prohibited by international law;1 however, that general rule is increasingly subjected to several exceptions.
William Thomas Worster