EU Associate Citizenship – Initial thoughts – Joel Baccas

The interest of Associate Citizenship of the EU has suddenly picked up a lot of interest and rightly so. Pro EU supports never consented to their acquired rights to be taken away… and I bet not many Brexiters have realised they voted to lose rights and protections. 
 
On the face of it, I am supportive of this idea and here is why:
 
1. The Treaties do not make express reference to what happens to EU citizenship if a member decides to leave the EU. Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) says that the Treaties ‘shall cease to apply’ to the member leaving which would imply that EU citizenship is taken away from the people. This is because your EU citizenship is found in places like Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union so if the UK comes out of the EU legal framework, then one would assume that we lose our rights under EU legal framework. However to take rights away surely would require some kind of express provision!?
 
2. EU Associate Citizenship is a very good idea because it allows the rights we acquired, while the UK was a member to continue. It also potentially falls within one of the objectives laid out in the TEU at Article 1 which is ‘creating an ever closer union among the people of Europe’. It might  not be in the EU’s nature to strip acquired rights away from ‘people’ although I imagine getting the other members to agree to this would be very difficult. The UK as a state would cease having EU benefits but the people could carry on enjoying them while achieving the objective of a closer union among the people. 
 
The issues I have with EU Associated Citizenship are as follows: 
 
1. It would allow Brexiters, remember those people who absolutely hate their EU citizenship so much but can never concretely explain why, to keep the very thing they hate while deriving benefit from it. However, this could also be beneficial because it would make them realise how lucky they are to have it. 
 
  2. I would expect the EU Associate Citizenship to only apply to people born before and during the time the UK was a member until 31 January 2020 because they would have acquired the rights under EU law. This is no doubt good for me and many others but it would be extremely sad to see those born post 31 January 2020 grow up without EU citizenship. The silver lining of this is that it will allow many of those in the ‘Boomer’ generation to see what exactly they took away from younger people ie their rights to live work study across the EU which may lead to the UK rejoining one day.  
 
Keeping these rights means that people will keep a part of the European identity while the UK as a state suffers the result of leaving the EU framework. It also lets those who do not see the UK as the open, progressive and pragmatic country it used to be the opportunity to leave. This could strengthen the cause to get the UK back into the EU as old fashioned and isolationist views slowly fade out or…… lead to a UK brain drain as the UK government carries on catering to the old fashioned and isolationist views. If you were given the chance to keep you EU citizenship, what would you do?