The topic of citizenship education and the promotion of democratic citizenship in schools has risen to the top of educational policy agendas in Europe over the past three decades. This rise in attention, however, appears to be accompanied by an apparent lack of attention to the specific manner in which citizenship, education and the assumed relationship between both are currently conceptualised and understood in this policy context. The currently dominant notions of citizenship education centre around a concept of citizenship-as-competence, illustrating a certain assumption of equivalence between citizenship and formal education in schools, without further elaborating on this assumption. By means of a critical re-reading of key European educational policy texts referring to citizenship education, and their use of the key concepts of citizenship and education, our analysis shows how the competence-based approach to citizenship education in European educational policymaking entails tensions with its own assumptions, therefore falling short of its own proclaimed purpose of emancipating young people in Europe to become autonomous, engaged and critical democratic citizens.

在过去的三十年中，公民教育和促进学校民主公民的话题已成为欧洲教育政策议程的重中之重。然而，这种关注的增加似乎伴随着对当前在这种政策背景下概念化和理解公民，教育和两者之间的假定关系的具体方式的明显缺乏关注。当前主流的公民教育概念围绕着“公民即能力”的概念，说明了在学校中公民身份与正规教育相当的某种假设，而无需进一步详细说明。通过对有关公民教育的主要欧洲教育政策文本进行批判性的重新阅读，以及对公民教育的关键概念的使用，我们的分析表明，在欧洲教育政策制定中基于能力的公民教育方法如何导致与它本身的假设，因此未达到其宣称的解放欧洲年轻人成为自治，积极参与和批判性民主公民的目的。