Introduction

Since the 1990s both the Council of Europe and the European Union (EU) have contributed to fostering democratic change in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by, among others, defining and promoting new forms of education for citizenship (Huddleston, 2005, p 51; Olafsdottir, 2008, p 129). Though both European organizations are constrained in their legal capacity to enforce educational policies at national levels, they rely on informational and, to some extent, financial and organizational tools to influence national policies (Abs, 2021, p 330). As a consequence, educational policies and curricula in European countries increasingly include translations and implementations of supranational European policy initiatives on education for citizenship (Neubauer, 2012, p 82).

Considering that Europeanization has an impact on how citizenship education is conceived and carried out (Keating, 2014), in this chapter I investigate the concepts of citizenship promoted at the European supranational level within their educational documents and materials.1 My methodology consists of a qualitative analysis of teaching materials and implementation reports produced by the Council of Europe and the EU and is complemented by insights from the academic literature.

Given the ideological sensitivity of the concept of citizenship, reaching consensus on the aims and approach of citizenship education is challenging (Veugelers, 2021, p 25). In these supranational approaches, I question whether one model of citizenship imposes itself upon others or if we can detect influences from several models.