“States of Exception”: EU’s Relationship with De-facto States and Implications on Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Identity

Jay Ramasubramanyam | BIG Research Reports | #64

From ‘Brexit’ that resulted in the UK voting to leave the European Union to construction of border walls between EU states, where none existed before, in an attempt to curb refugees entering respective nations, efforts to assert national identity and pseudo-nationalism, has been on the rise in the recent years, due to perceived external threats. In the midst of such crises that have been framed as supposed threats to the integrity and sovereignty of individual EU states, fissures have emerged in the supranational identity that has often set apart the EU from the rest of the world. In the midst of such guardedness, where do states with limited recognition feature in EU’s assertion of regional sovereignty and identity? This paper will analyze the relationship between the EU and states with limited recognition or de-facto states and its implications on issues of sovereignty, identity and legal personality of such unrecognized states. I will attempt to examine the European community’s perception of a state’s validity and its impacts, in addition to analyzing whether “citizenship” in “non-states” is contingent upon their recognition by other states and whether individuals living in such states risk being rendered stateless.

Jay Ramasubramanyam