Abstract
Winds of change have been blowing in the ranks of European citizenship ever since the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) inaugurated a few years ago the doctrine of the genuine enjoyment of the substance of the rights of citizenship. Such a new doctrinal prong represents a bold departure from the Court’s ‘traditional’ doctrine of supranational citizenship, premised on the building of an ever thicker web of connections between free movement rights and citizenship rights.1 In a cluster of recent cases, the CJEU has found that national measures may interfere with a European citizen’s rights even in situations where no free movement rights have been exercised. This is the case if the provisions in question threaten the enjoyment of the genuine substance of European citizens’ rights.2 The turn to the doctrine of the substance of citizenship has not been free from hesitations and uncertainties. The same court, after announcing and applying its new test in a first case, has promptly retreated from it in the following one, signalling a measure of confusion as to what exactly the substance of European citizenship is.
Published Version
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