Public Policy and Citizenship

Public policy refers to the government laws, regulations, court decisions, and local ordinances, all of which influence various aspects of our lives. Therefore, each citizen is a stakeholder in relation to the public policies at local, regional, national, or transnational level. The key to having an impact in the policy making process is to change the public opinion by taking action. EU citizenship is among the most significant achievements of the European project encompassing free movement, political and democratic rights, the right for EU citizens to benefit from consular protection by other Member States when not represented abroad.

Besides the legal meaning (the legal relationship between the individual and the state), citizenship is a broad multi-layered concept referring, for instance, to the sense of belonging to a community, sharing a moral code, a sense of identity, loyalty to a commonly owned civilisation, an identical set of rights and obligations. The concept of community, in a geographical sense, is defined from two perspectives – the local community, in which a person lives, and the state, to which a person belongs.

Sources: Mackinac Center for Public Policy, European Commission, European Commission