Quest for the Holy Grail—Is a Unified Approach to the Market Freedoms and European Citizenship Justified?

Abstract
The case law of the CJEU on the economic free movement of people has departed from the traditional requirement that a nexus must be established between individual free movement and cross-border economic activity, which has led to an extension of its scope. It is submitted that concerns with the protection of fundamental rights of European citizens are driving this process, and that the CJEU has sought to protect these fundamental rights through the market freedoms in two ways: by arguing that market freedoms are fundamental right themselves, and/or that European Citizenship has changed their normative underpinnings and status. This Article criticises both lines of argument, and defends a third: that the protection of these fundamental rights must be achieved at European level, if at all, through a conception of European Citizenship able to stand on its own.

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