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Since the mid-1980s, the notion of 'European citizenship' has been discussed as a crucial factor in the formation of neo-European identity with particular symbolic, ideological and political content. This article explores aspects in which 'European citizenship' symbolic content and constructs (membership, belonging, rights, participation and identity) are delineated through the European Union's institutional, political and educational discourses and policies. It is argued that, over the past decades, the institutional construction of European Union (EU) citizenship has been characterized by a weak ideological and symbolic content as well as by political and social deficits. Moreover, it is claimed that the EU's education discourses and policies are controlled by an economic and technocratic rationale (marketization, govermentality, benchmarking, etc.), through which the 'European citizenship' paradigm is gradually depoliticized, mutated, and decreased to a measurable 'civic competence' governed by numbers.