Remedying the Inequalities of Economic Citizenship in Europe: Cohesion Policy and the Negative Right to Move

• Author: Francesca Strumia
• Date: 01 November 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0386.2011.00577.x
• Published date: 01 November 2011

eulj_577725..743

Remedying the Inequalities of Economic

Citizenship in Europe: Cohesion Policy and

the Negative Right to Move

Francesca Strumia*

Abstract: European supranational citizenship draws the boundaries of a community of

citizens, sharing the status of economic actors in the single market. The specter of

inequality threatens however the resulting promise of shared membership: economic citi-

zens face profoundly different opportunities for economic involvement, depending on their

nationality and residence within the Union. Free movement rights open up a narrow way

out of inequality by enabling European citizens to relocate; however, they cannot alone

solve the inequality problem that economic citizenship poses. In the quest for alternative

remedies to this problem, this article explores the potential of European cohesion policy.

It argues that cohesion policy, by addressing gaps in wealth throughout the Community,

draws the traits of a negative right to move, which adds to the protection of European

economic citizenship. Through the cohesion lens, the premises are laid for a renewed

assessment of the project of shared economic citizenship.

I Introduction

European integration has brought about a status of supranational citizenship, bestowed

upon the nationals of the Member States according to the letter of the Treaties,1and

shared, according to a broader vision, by all actors on European markets. The Achilles’

heal of this citizenship, which is economic in nature and brings about a promise of shared

membership for economic actors on the European market, is inequality.

In truth, many are the vices that the literature has reconnected to European citizen-

ship, often depicted as the anomalous fruit of a society bent under the imperatives of

the market.2Even for market citizens, European citizenship is a faulty status.

* SJD, Harvard Law School, PhD, University of Torino. Postgraduate Research Fellow, Harvard Law

School, Attorney at Law, London, England. I would like to thank Professor Daniel Meltzer for inspiration

and challenging discussions that brought together the ideas underpinning this article; thank you also to

Professor Mario Comba and to Professor Enrico Grosso for valuable comments on this work, and to

Fernanda Nicola, for helpful feedback and for sharing ideas and thoughts.

1See Art 20 TFEU.

2See C. Rumford, European Cohesion? Contradictions in EU Integration (MacMillan, 2000), at 15; also see

I. Ward, The Margins of European Law (MacMillan, 1996), at 95–100; D. Schnapper, ‘The European

Debate on Citizenship’, (1997) 126 Daedalus 199, 204–208; R. Aron, ‘Multinational Citizenship?’ (1974)

41/4 Social Research 638, 648–653.

European Law Journal, Vol. 17, No. 6, November 2011, pp. 725–743.

© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA

Opportunities available to economic actors in different regions of the common market

differ indeed profoundly, depending on several variables such as levels of development,

availability of quality education and presence of infrastructures. As citizenship is first

of all about shared status in a bounded community, this substrate of inequality threat-

ens the project of supranational economic citizenship and waters down the bond of

membership that links European economic citizens.

A finding of inequality provides the entry point to this article, which proposes to

investigate ways out of disparity available to the citizens of Europe. In this optic, the

article explores the virtues and limits of free movement, which offers to some, but not

all European citizens, the concrete opportunity to pursue an improvement of their

economic conditions by relocating. The insufficiency of free movement rights in rem-

edying the problem of inequality for economic citizens reveals a vacuum of protec-

tion. European cohesion policy, which provides funding for narrowing wealth gaps

among European regions, might contribute to fill this vacuum. The article explores

the potential of cohesion policy in this sense; the central argument is that European

cohesion policy, by laying the premises for improved economic conditions in the

place of residence of an economic citizen, provides a valuable alternative to reloca-

tion; it protects indeed a negative right to move, thereby fostering economic citizen-

ship and complementing the role of active free movement rights in mitigating its

disparities.

Seen through the cohesion lens, economic citizenship portrays a face previously left

in shade. While the discourse of supranational citizenship is often associated with the

discourse of free movement, so that European citizenship is mostly thought of as a

citizenship for intra-Community migrants, the cohesion perspective sheds light on the

static side of economic citizenship. A dual vision of economic citizenship takes shape,

where for part of the community of citizens, a meaningful albeit narrow path out of

inequality passes through the exercise of active free movement rights; for another

part of this community, the route to increased equality rather goes through the indi-

rect affirmation, mediated by cohesion intervention, of a right not to move. This

article further argues that the divide between these two distinct groups of citizens

might be marked by considerations of skill; if free movement represents a concrete

and appealing opportunity for the highly skilled, low-skilled citizens might more

easily find relief from inequality in the cohesion-mediated protection of their negative

right to move.

The encounter with cohesion lends substance to the notion of economic citizenship

and mitigates the problem of inequality, reinvigorating in turn the promise of supra-

national citizenship in Europe. It appears that bonds of solidarity and elements of

sharing are not extraneous to this citizenship often accused of being polluted by market

culture; awareness in this sense provides important hints to reassess the critiques moved

to the notion of economic citizenship and the worries that it raises.

Part I of this article introduces the notion of economic citizenship and highlights the

inequality problem that emerges in connection with European economic citizenship.

Part II explores potential ways out of inequality for European citizens, focusing in

particular on free movement and on cohesion policy. Part III focuses on economic

citizenship after the encounter with cohesion; it introduces the notion of negative right to

move and explores the split between mobile and static economic citizenship. It argues

that the divide between the two passes along a skill line. It then reconsiders, in light of this

novel vision, some of the worries often associated in the literature with the notion of

economic citizenship.

European Law Journal Volume 17

726 © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.