Overlooked Problems of the EU Citizenship and Misbehaving Malta

The paper discusses a problem whether a Member State is free to grant its citizenship according to conditions set purely by its own national law. The problem is that Malta decided naturalize wealthy foreigners on a commercial basis. Such practice has, however, serious implications in the sphere of European Union law. Such citizen due to this fact acquires a set of rights, which stems directly from EU law, independently on national regulation of any other Member State. The most important right from this perspective is the right to move and reside anywhere in the European Union. This may enable him/her to circumvent strict provisions of immigration law of majority of Member States which of course applies only on nationals of third states but may not apply on citizens of European Union. Existing provisions of the European Union citizenship do not foresee the possibility of such use or even abuse of EU law by a Member State. Thus, they do not introduce any tool which would enable the other Member State to defend their interests. Potential solution lies only within the EU law, however, since it does not explicitly address this problem, it may only be derived from international public law as it was interpreted in case Nottebohm. Such national legislation may also constitute a breach of duty of loyal cooperation as it is set in article 4 TEU. In the article authors however conclude that conditions necessary to invoke this provision are most likely not met.