Equal Citizenship And Its Limits In Eu Law

The research monograph Equal Citizenship and Its Limits in EU Law: We the Burden? is a critical study of the scope of EU citizenship as an 'equal status' of all Member State nationals. The book re-conceptualises the relationship between the status of EU citizenship and EU citizens' fundamental right to equal treatment by asking what indicates the presence of agency in EU law. A thorough analysis of the case-law is used to support the argument that the present view of active citizenship in EU law fails to explain how EU citizens should be treated in relation to one another and what counts as 'related' for the purposes of equal treatment in a transnational context. In addressing these questions, the book responds to the increasing need to find a more substantive theory of justice for the European Union. The book suggests that a more balanced view of agency in the case of EU citizens can be based on the inherent connection between citizens' agency and their subjectivity. This analysis provides an integrated philosophical account of transnational equality by showing that a new source of 'meaningful relationships' for the purposes of equal treatment arises from recognizing and treating EU citizens as full subjects of EU law and European integration. The book makes a significant contribution to the existing scholarship on EU law, first, by demonstrating that the undefined nature of EU citizenship is fundamentally a question about transnational justice and not just about individual rights and, secondly, by introducing a framework within which the current normative indeterminacy of EU citizenship can be overcome.

This book provides a framework for comparing EU citizenship and US citizenship as standards of equality. If we wish to understand the legal development of the citizenship of the European Union and its relationship to the nationalities of the member states, it is helpful to examine the history of United States citizenship and, in particular, to elaborate a theory of ‘duplex’ citizenships found in federal orders. In such a citizenship, each person’s citizenship is necessarily ‘layered’ with the citizenship or nationality of a (member) state. The question this book answers is: how does federal citizenship, as a claim to equality, affect the relationship between the (member) state and its national or citizen? Because the book places equality, not allegiance to a sovereign at the center of its analysis of citizenship, it manages to escape traditional analyses of the EU that measure it by the standard of a sovereign state. The text presents a coherent account of the development of EU citizenship and EU civil rights for those who wish to understand their continuing development in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Scholars and legal practitioners of EU law will find novel insights in this book into how EU citizenship works, in order to be able to grasp the direction in which it will continue to develop. And it may be of great interest to American scholars of law and political science who wish to understand one aspect of how the EU works as a constitutional order, not merely as an order of international law, by comparison to their own history. Jeremy Bierbach is an attorney at Franssen Advocaten in Amsterdam. He holds a Ph.D. in European constitutional law from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

This book critically analyses the case law on EU citizenship in relation to its personal free movement rights, its status on the primary law level, and EU fundamental rights protection. The book exposes the legal space where EU citizenship variably loses or gains legal relevance, and questions how this space can be overcome. Through a thorough analysis of the core personal free movement rights of residence, family reunification, equal treatment and equal political participation, the book demonstrates how the development of the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union has generated a two-tiered legal concept of EU citizenship. Depending on the nature of the legal claim at hand, EU citizenship may appear as a poor legal personhood for exercising free movement rights; sometimes pushing the individual who is in a factual cross-border situation out of the scope of Union law. Contrastingly, in other strands of the jurisprudence, we see EU citizenship and its primary law levelled-rights stretch the jurisdictional scope of Union law, triggering the EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights for review of the individual case. The book enhances the understanding of the legal concept of EU citizenship in Union law and contributes to the debate on the future development of EU citizenship, its relationship to the Charter, and the strength of its legal position for the person who exercises freedom of movement.

The question of supranational citizenship is one of the more controversial in EU law. It is politically contested, the object of prominent court rulings and the subject of intense academic debates. This important new collection examines this vexed question, paying particular attention to the Court of Justice. Offering analytical readings of the key cases, it also examines those political, social and normative factors which influence the evolution of citizens' rights. This examination is not only timely but essential given the prominence of citizen rights in recent political debates, including in the Brexit referendum. All of these questions will be explored with a special emphasis on the interplay between immigration from third countries and rules on Union citizenship.

European citizenship is facing numerous challenges, including fundamental rights and social justice considerations. These get amplified in the context of Brexit and the general rise of populism in Europe today. This book takes a representative selection of these challenges, which raise a multitude of highly complex issues, as an invitation to provide a critical appraisal of the current state of the EU legal framework surrounding EU citizenship. The contributions are grouped in four parts, dealing with constitutional developments posing challenges to EU citizenship; the limits of the free movement paradigm in the context of EU citizenship; EU citizenship beyond free movement; and, lastly, EU citizenship in the context of the outside world, including Brexit, the EEA and Eurasian Economic Union.

This book maps out, from a variety of theoretical standpoints, the challenges generated by European integration and EU citizenship for community membership, belonging and polity-making beyond the state. It does so by focusing on three main issues of relevance for how EU citizenship has developed and its capacity to challenge state sovereignty and authority as the main loci of creating and delivering rights and protection. First, it looks at the relationship between citizenship of the Union and European identity and assesses how immigration and access to nationality in the Member States impact on the development of a common European identity. Secondly, it discusses how the idea of solidarity interacts with the boundaries of EU citizenship as constructed by the entitlement and capacity of mobile citizens to enjoy equality and social rights as EU citizens. Thirdly, the book engages with issues of EU citizenship and equality as the building blocks of the EU project. By engaging with these themes, this volume provides a topical and comprehensive account of the present and future development of Union citizenship and studies the collisions between the realisation of its constructive potential and Member State autonomy.

In the 1990s, the Maastricht Treaty introduced the right to free movement for EU citizens. In practice, however, there are substantial barriers to making use of this right, particularly to integration and to accessing the social and welfare rights available. This is particularly true when it comes to accessing social rights, such as social assistance, housing benefit, study grants and health care. This book provides a detailed description and thorough analysis of these barriers, in both law and practice.

This Research Handbook provides a panoramic guide to the study and research of EU citizenship and its development within a challenging environment characterised by restrictive access to social benefits, Brexit, Euroscepticism and Covid-19. It combines theoretical perspectives with analyses of both the existing and future rights, duties and social protection that EU citizens ought to enjoy in a democratic and principled European Union.