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CYIL 7 ȍ2016Ȏ
THE SCOPE AND THE FUTURE OF EQUALITY OF TREATMENT…
like Ms Dano as unsympathetic welfare tourists, non-willing to work and with no
promising future (Phoa, 2015)?
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Or is it under the pressure of certain Member
States that the Court has restricted access to social assistance to economically
inactive Union citizens? Of course, Ms Dano is not a perspective or model Union
citizen, but she does not seem to be an unreasonable burden for the German social
assistance system. She does receive some assistance like child benefits amounting to
€ 184 per month and an advance on maintenance payments of € 133 per month, but
she is accommodated and fed free by her sister. The amount of the German social
system supporting her is certainly not endangering the State’s finances. It seems
that the new approach of the Court is abandoning the individual approach to move
forward a “model” approach. The refusal of Ms Dano’s request for social assistance
serves as an example for all economically Union citizens who would decide in the
future to move to another Member State solely with the aim to take advantage of
the host social assistance system.
2. The principle of equality of treatment under challenges
The principal of equality of treatment as it is regulated nowadays has been now
questioned by the occurrence of new phenomena resolving in new positions of
Member States. The question of the future of the principle of equality of treatment
of economically inactive Union citizens is really at stake.
2.1 The new challenges and the new Member States’ requirements
Member States of the EU have been facing a new political, economic and social
context since 2004 leading to their restrictiveness towards freedom of movement of
persons and equality of treatment of Union citizens as well as their abuse of their
expulsion powers (Maslowski, 2016).
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– New political, economic and social context since 2004
The last enlargements of the EU to economically poorer countries in 2004 and
2007 has provoked great fears amongst the old Member States.
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A new concept
emerged in 2004 for the first time in the history of the EU, restriction periods
provisionally restricting the access of nationals of the new Member States to the
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PHOA P.,
EU citizenship: reality or fiction? A law and literature approach to EU Citizenship
, 2015, p. 84.
34
MASLOWSKI S., Member States’ Sovereignty And Freedom of Movement of Union Citizens in
KOVÁŘOVÁ, E., L. MELECKÝ and M. STANÍČKOVÁ (eds.).
Proceedings of the 3rd International
Conference on European Integration,
2016. Ostrava: VŠB – Technical University of Ostrava, 2016,
pp. 594-604, ISBN 978-80-248-3911-0.
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Nevertheless, we should not forget, as Lola Isidro reminds us in her article „De la citoyenneté sociale
au „tourisme social“, that, even in 1964, Professor Gérard Lyon-Caen was stating that, following the
decision of the ECJ in the case Unger 75/63 that the provisions of comunautary law by this time were
tending to favor what he was calling “social tourism”. Fears related to social tourism or unreasonable
burden on the social assistance systém of the host Member State are not so new as we might think.