Free Movement of Students in the EU

Abstract

The aim of the article is to show how free movement rights have been developed and elaborated in the European Union. One of the important aspects is to analyse the role of education in the EU and the powers of the EU in that sector to see whether rights guaranteed by the EU can be utilised to protect and guarantee education-related movement. Education is also the area that Member States have wanted to exclude from harmonisation. The article looks at a very narrow set of issues related to free movement of students and their rights from a human rights perspective. First, different categories of EU citizens are described and compared vis-a-vis their rights as migrants in another EU Member State. Second, students as a special category are distinguished and issues of both access to education and access to social benefits are covered. The paper also looked at possibilities to create human-rights-based arguments for migrants to receive rights in another Member State, but it was concluded that this basis is rather weak. Also, a special circumstance of linguistic discrimination is analysed as a potential barrier for free movement of students, concluding that the picture is not so clear and further guidance from the CJEU would be advisable.