Toothless European Citizenship / Šimon Uradnik

taking several minor jobs; nonetheless, in the fourth year, he began to experience economic difficulties. In order to address them, he applied to the public authority for the minimex — minimum allowance. Despite being granted the allowance, the decision was eventually upheld by an involved minister who had determined that Grzelczyk was not entitled to the allowance since he was not a Belgian national or an economically active person. At the time of the decision, he was no longer employed. With the judgement in this case, Union citizenship began to head towards a status which was no longer mainly economicbased — derived primarily from the crossborder economic movement, but rather towards a true status of citizenship, which ‘[strengthened] the rights of non active economic actors’ 51 also. W. Maas evaluated this development with a gloss: ‘from workers to movers to citizens’, 52 as a central idea behind the Court of Justice’s case-law; nonetheless, Union citizenship reached only the notional second stage in this era. The concept of the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of nationality, which had already been presented in Case of Martínez Sala, was in this case explicitly enhanced as follows: ‘Union citizenship is destined to be the fundamental status of nationals of the Member States, enabling those who find themselves in the same situation to enjoy the same treatment in law irrespective of their nationality […]’. 53 This provision can be found in various following judgements, exempli gratia , Case of Baumbast and R 54 and Case of Rottmann. 55 The word ‘destined’ was eventually replaced by ‘intended’ in the latter; 56 and in this wording, it became a cornerstone for future case-law of the Court. European Union’s intervention into the area of nationality and citizenship, which had historically been a prerogative of sovereign states, through the Court of Justice has not terminated only with the declaration of the nature of the ‘fundamental status’ of Union 51 Dora Kostakopoulou, ‘The Evolution of European Union Citizenship’ (2008) University of Manchester School of Law Symposium 290. 52 Willem Maas, ‘The Origins, Evolution, and Political Objectives of EU Citizenship’ (2014) German Law Journal 797. 53 Case C184/99 Grzelczyk [2001] ECLI:EU:C:2001:458, paragraph 31. 54 See Case C-413/99 Baumbast and R [2002] ECLI:EU:C:2002:493, paragraph 82. 55 See Case C-135/08 Rottmann [2010] ECLI:EU:C:2010:104, paragraph 43. 56 The plot behind this change could be, according to H. d’Oliveira, that ‘[i]t may have indicated a shift from [the Court of Justice’s] own vision (‘destined’) to deference to the vision of the lawmakers (‘intended’)’. To that effect, see Hans UJ d’Oliveira ‘Union Citizenship and Beyond’ in Nathan Cambien and Dimitry Kochenov and Elise Muir (eds.), European Citizenship under Stress (Brill | Nijhoff 2020) 41.

17