Cittadinanza europea e solidarietà nazionali

This paper addresses the main problems related to the controversial nature of the European Union citizenship status, with particular regard to its social dimension. Reconstructing the ECJ jurisprudence on access to social benefits of national welfare systems by different categories of Europeans "mobile citizens" identified by Community secondary legislation, the author highlights the growing tension between the boundaries of national solidarity and the development of case-law of a certain degree of financial solidarity between Member States imposed by the fundamental character of the Union citizenship status. In light of the strong national resistance, the most recent Court of Justice jurisprudence expresses balances between the different involved interests and principles substantially oriented within the scope to safeguard the public finances of the host Member States and the estate of its welfare systems. In this perspective, the analysis of the decisions made in the last three years in relation to so called Europeans "inactive" citizens and to persons no longer hold the status of worker in the host Member States allows the author to detect the negative effects on the level of protection of equal access of EU citizens to national welfare benefits and on the scope of the relevant right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Union. Nevertheless, while stressing the limits of a mainly judicial construction of the inclusive paradigm of European citizenship, for to the author it is difficult to argue that we have already established a consolidated jurisprudential guidelines, which would definitely reaffirm the logic of social integration in host Member States solely in the narrow perspective of "selective" and "merchantable" European citizenship.

Giampaolo Gerbasi, Cittadinanza europea e solidarietà nazionali in "CITTADINANZA EUROPEA (LA)" 2/2016, pp 85-125, DOI: 10.3280/CEU2016-002004