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This article examines the transitional arrangements for the free movement of workers implemented for citizens coming from Eastern European countries during the EU’s enlargement in 2004 and 2007. The article offers a reading of the transitional measures as legal techniques and operations, and it argues that one of their notable effects is the creation of European citizenship, which produces differentiated rights. European citizenship can thus be viewed as the result of a process of statehood restructuring. The focus here is on the way in which European citizenship has concrete political effects, even though its justifications are formulated in economic or legal terms.