Citizenship of the European Union

Citizenship of the European Union was introduced by the Maastricht Treaty, which was signed in 1992, and has been in force since 1993. European Union citizenship is supplementary to national citizenship and affords rights such as the right to vote in European elections, the right to free movement, settlement and employment across the EU, and the right to consular protection by other EU states' embassies when a person's country of citizenship does not maintain an embassy or consulate in the country they need protection in.

History

EU citizenship as a distinct concept was first introduced by the Maastricht Treaty, and was extended by the Treaty of Amsterdam. Prior to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the European Communities treaties provided guarantees for the free movement of economically active persons, but not, generally, for others. The 1951 Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community established a right to free movement for workers in these industries and the 1957 Treaty of Rome provided for the free movement of workers and services.

Nick Clegg

Nicholas William Peter Clegg (born 7 January 1967) is a British Liberal Democrats politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Lord President of the Council from 2010 to 2015 in the Cameron coalition ministry. Clegg was the Leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007 to 2015 and has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sheffield Hallam since 2005.

Clegg was educated at the University of Cambridge, the University of Minnesota, and the College of Europe, before becoming a journalist for the Financial Times and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). In 2007 he was elected Leader of the Liberal Democrats, leading his party into a coalition government with the Conservative Party in 2010. In 2015, he resigned as leader of the Liberal Democrats following that year's general election at which his party was decisively defeated and lost 48 MPs, moving from 56 MPs to eight.

Clegg is a fluent speaker of five European languages.

Early life and family

Clegg was born in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, the third of four children of Nicholas Peter Clegg, CBE, chairman of United Trust Bank and a former trustee of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation (where Ken Clarke was an adviser). Clegg descends from "Russia's old Tsarist nobility": his paternal grandmother, Kira von Engelhardt, Baroness von Smolensk, was a Russian noblewoman, and the granddaughter of Attorney-General of the Russian senate, Ignatiy Platonovich Zakrevsky. His English grandfather was Hugh Anthony Clegg, editor of the British Medical Journal for 35 years.