The reasonable citizen: A model for bridging ethics and politics in the EU

Abstract The ethical‐political model of the EU needs normative rethinking after the pandemic. Using Dworkin's ‘thesis of continuity’ between ethics and politics, I argue that a strong model of the citizen, called on to exercise duties and civic virtues, is badly needed by the EU. The legitimacy of EU political institutions is not enough, if we want to promote the participation of citizens to their functioning. The basic point is that of arguing in favour of the model of ‘the reasonable citizen’, aimed to overcome the dominant liberal model of ‘citizenship as rights’. This is shown by the ‘European Social Model’, but its weaknesses need to be supplemented by a republican conception. In order for the reasonable citizen not to be just an abstract ideal, some measure of operationalisation is proposed through ‘progressively increasing constellations of common identities’; these rely on and respect the multiple demoi of the EU.