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The Right to Have What Rights? EU Citizenship in Need of Clarification
Author(s) -
Kochenov Dimitry
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
european law journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1468-0386
pISSN - 1351-5993
DOI - 10.1111/eulj.12043
Subject(s) - citizenship , legal certainty , scope (computer science) , meaning (existential) , political science , law , law and economics , fundamental rights , certainty , sociology , human rights , philosophy , epistemology , computer science , politics , programming language
This paper provides a brief critical overview of the recent EU citizenship case‐law of the C ourt of J ustice including R ottmann , R uiz Z ambrano , M c C arthy and D ereci . While these cases open a number of new avenues of fundamental importance for the development of EU law, they also undermine legal certainty and send contradictory signals as to the essence of the EU citizenship status and the role it ought to play in the system of EU law. Most importantly, the C ourt's reluctance to specify what is meant by the ‘essence of rights’ of EU citizenship potentially has disastrous consequences following its own determination that such rights play a crucial role in moving particular factual constellations within the material scope of EU law. The substance and meaning of such rights is however left in suspense to harmful effects. An urgent clarification is needed.