Paper Titles & Abstracts

Free movement of Union citizens, whether economically active or not, is a means of European integration, and the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) consistently upholds the existence of 'a certain degree of financial solidarity between nationals of a host Member State and nationals of other Member States'. Defining national solidarity in terms of (preservation of) the welfare state, this paper questions the meaning of Union solidarity in the context of free movement of persons, and the relation between the two. Analysing the case law on access to social benefits of economically inactive European migrants, the study finds that the CJEU establishes the contours of EU financial solidarity by applying a test of national integration. This is irrespective of whether the community of risk, the financial resources of which are relied upon, is that of the home or host Member State. The existence of a 'real link' between the claimant and the respective society is assessed in relation to integration in the employment market in as far as job seekers are concerned, and in the broader national community for students and pensioners. The result of the parasitism of EU solidarity on social citizenship of the Member States, is that there are 27 shades of social citizenship of the Union.