The Right to Have What Rights? EU Citizenship in Need of Clarification

• Date: 01 July 2013
• Published date: 01 July 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/eulj.12043
• Author: Dimitry Kochenov

The Right to Have What Rights?

EU Citizenship in Need of Clarif‌ication

Dimitry Kochenov*

Abstract: This paper provides a brief critical overview of the recent EU citizenship

case-law of the Court of Justice including Rottmann,Ruiz Zambrano,McCarthy and

Dereci. 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 Court’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.

‘Lament, then, leads the theologian into that most diff‌icult of intellectual tasks, the thinking of the

point of contact between our theories about faith and its practice.’1

I Introduction

The Court of Justice of the EU (European Court of Justice (ECJ)) stands to

be criticised for the lack of clarity, which its recent EU citizenship case-law abun-

dantly demonstrates. The recent cases, including Rottmann,2Ruiz Zambrano,3

* Professor of EU Constitutional Law, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Many thanks to Rainer

Bauböck and Jo Shaw out of whose profound scepticism this lament arose.

1E. Farasta and B. Brock, ‘Introduction’, in E. Farasta and B. Brock (eds), Evoking Lament: A Theo-

logical Discussion (Continuum, 2009), at 3.

2Case C-135/08, Rottmann [2010] ECR I-1449. Analysed in J. Shaw (ed), ‘Has the European Court of

Justice Challenged the Member State Sovereignty in Nationality Law?’ EUI RSCAS Paper No. 62

(2011); G.-R. de Groot, ‘Overwegingen over de Janko Rottmann-beslissing van het Europese Hof van

Justitie’, (2010) 1 Asiel & Migrantenrecht 293; D. Kochenov, ‘Annotation, Case C-135/08 Rottmann’,

(2010) 47 Common Market Law Review 1831; S. Iglesias Sánchez, ‘¿Hacia una nueva relación entre la

nationalidad estatal y la ciudadanía europea?’, (2010) 37 Revista de Derecho Comunitario Europeo

933.

3Case C-34/09, Ruiz Zambrano [2011] 2 CMLR 46. Annotated by P. Van Elsuwege, ‘Shifting Boundaries?:

European Union Citizenship and the Scope of Application of EU Law’, (2011) 38 Legal Issues of

Economic Integration 263; K. Hailbronner and D. Thym, ‘Annotation, Case C-34/09 Gerardo Ruiz

Zambrano’, (2011) 48 Common Market Law Review 1253; A. Lansbergen and N. Miller, ‘Citizenship

Rights in Internal Situations: An Ambiguous Revolution?’, (2011) 7 European Constitutional Law Review

287.

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European Law Journal, Vol. 19, No. 4, July 2013, pp. 502–516.

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