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This paper tries to analyse a paradox concerning EU citizenship: though it had been defined in the Maastricht treaty as a dynamic concept, including a revision procedure, and though the last IGC pretended to respond to citizens' expectations, no new provisions have been added to EU citizenship in the Amsterdam treaty. This may be explained by the ambiguous initial definition of EU citizenship. Going back to its genesis, the paper argues that it was a compromise between federalist member states, who hoped this concept would bypass intergovernmental blockages through the promotion of political mobilisation and judicial dynamics, and other member states who successfully opposed this strategy, and kept this policy area under governmental control, depriving if of its autonomous dynamics. The last IGC negotiations confirm that the concept was frozen by this political‐legal definition; some member states convinced their partners that new citizenship rights, which have a direct effect, should not be added. The authors of the new treaty have tried to hide this stagnation behind the idea of a Citizens' Europe. They argue mat new policies and institutional reforms answer citizen's expectations, and thereby ignore the difference between benefits citizens draw from policies when member states decide to implement them and rights they personally possess and can assert, even when member states refuse to act.
