Abstract: Focuses on two related questions: the construction of the citizen as a constitutional figure in the EU, and the interpretation of the new constitutional settlement for the Union after the Treaty of Amsterdam. The two issues are brought together in so far as citizenship is treated in this paper less as an object of study in itself and more as an optic for understanding the development of institution-building and polity-formation in the Union context. This builds the key relationship between constitutional construction and the development of the citizenship idea in the EU context. The paper comprises in part a review of citizenship issues in the EU post Amsterdam, with a particular focus on the types of questions that animate the discussion of citizenship, and for the rest a brief review of how the Treaty of Amsterdam changed the citizenship/constitutional settlement in small but significant ways.

Keywords: Amsterdam Treaty, citizenship, constitution, European Union, institution-building, polity formation,