The paper questions to what extent the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) participates in the emergence of federal dynamics in European Welfare policies. It sheds light on adaptation/resistance dynamics that characterize the complex interactions between the various levels of power, within an increasingly multi-layered European social sphere. It specifically does so through the study of the impact of CJEU citizenship jurisprudence on the conditions of access to the Belgian welfare state.
This interdisciplinary paper first focuses on key CJEU rulings that put flesh on the bones of European treaty provisions on citizenship. It then accounts for (and assesses) two political evolutions that potentially weaken national sovereignty on welfare issues. First, it scrutinizes to what extent the CJEU alters the spatial boundaries of national welfare states by enabling European migrants to gain access to welfare benefits in the entire EU. Second, this (relative) territorial openness of the welfare state potentially results in changes in the way member states think of social policies. It may push them to reassess the way they solve the existing tension between the economic rationale lying behind the treaty provisions on EU citizenship and the logic of decommodification underlying their social policies.
The study reviews the main contributions on these two political issues. It draws upon their main conclusions to elaborate a revisited analytical framework that enables to determine the extent to which the CJEU citizenship rulings spur dynamics of deterritorialisation and decommodification of the Belgian welfare state. It focuses on the evolutions of the conditions of access to the Belgian welfare state, and details the reasons explaining their adaptation or resistance to these supranational judicial stimuli.
