European Union Citizenship and 'Tourism of Welfare': Challenging European Social Rights in Time of Enduring Crisis

The paper aims to investigate how European Union (EU) citizenship can currently deal more with internal Euroskeptical trends than migration flows external pressure. Boundaries have never been so firmly claimed before: EU is facing a severe challenge on its external borders due to huge migration from many third countries and, at the same time, is questioning freedom of movement of persons between Member States, therefore increasing limitations to it. The European project is trying to survive to a long-lasting storm, softly started in 2002 by Euro as a single currency for Member States accepting it and worsened by both 2008 financial crisis and growing migration on external borders. EU citizenship, solemnly declared in 1992, aimed to be meant as the European core, bringing with it extended rights filling freedom of movement of persons already assessed. Unexpectedly, the Court of Justice’s (EUCJ) relevant case law on European citizenship and social rights jeopardizes social solidarity instead of giving emphasis on EU citizenship alleged rights: from Brey (2013) to Dano (2014) and Alimanovic (2015) claims of social benefits have been more and more delimited in order to avoid non-national citizens become an unreasonable burden for host State social assistance system. Consistent EUCJ rulings on Zhu Chen, Rottmann, Ruiz Zambrano, McCarthy, Dereci, Iida, O and S, Alokpa et al., Ymeraga are not so back in time: the same Court, early interpreting EU law to the maximum extent of guarantees, now strives to preserve Member State financial stability in social system. It could be argued that Directive 2004/38 needs to be thoroughly commented to refrain European citizens from boosting a “tourism of welfare”, harming the welfare countries minority and supporting free movement of citizens from less wealthy Member States. It’s therefore urging to explore how the EUCJ is going to balance social solidarity and EU citizenship rights with Member States' claim to decrease social benefits to inactive non-national citizens: a ‘double-speed citizenship’ grounded on citizens’ income would never be acceptable.