Double Nationality in the EU: An Argument for Tolerance

Currently the Member States' nationalities, short of being abolished in the legal sense, mostly serve as access points to the status of EU citizenship. Besides, they provide their owners with a limited number of specific rights in deviation from the general principle of non‐discrimination on the basis of nationality, and—what is probably more important for the majority of their owners—trigger legalised discrimination in the wholly internal situations. Viewed in this light, the requirement to have only one Member State's nationality enforced in national law by 10 Member States seems totally outdated and misplaced. This paper focuses on the legal analysis of this controversial requirement.