Toothless European Citizenship / Šimon Uradnik

existing, it is more than apparent that the status has taken its place in the acquis communautaire, also with regard to the years of development. The development which might be described as being, on the one hand, shaped by the legislation in terms of what quality Union citizenship holds — from derivativeness to complementarity to additionality; and, on the other, by the Court’s case-law that has gradually extended fields where this status is present and for whomever it provides protection, which W. Maas depicts as ‘from workers to movers to citizens’. 101 The Court of Justice, by promulgating that ‘Union citizenship is destined to be the fundamental status of nationals of the Member States […]’, 102 posed a question of whether Union citizenship has already reached this stadium given that the word ‘destined’ directs rather pro futuro . Nonetheless, with respect to the changed wording after the Treaty of Lisbon and the Court of Justice’s replacement of ‘destined’ by ‘intended’, 103 the author thus considers citizenship of Union to reach that stadium. Ergo, as has the historical evolution of the status of Union citizenship been introduced, now it is time to immerse into what the essence of citizenship of the Union is.

101 See Willem Maas, ‘The Origins, Evolution, and Political Objectives of EU Citizenship’ (2014) German Law Journal 801.

102 Case C184/99 Grzelczyk [2001] ECLI:EU:C:2001:458, paragraph 31. 103 See Case C-135/08 Rottmann [2010] ECLI:EU:C:2010:104, paragraph 43.

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