Equality Across the Legal Orders; or Voiding EU Citizenship of Content

Dimitry Kochenov 

University of Groningen - Faculty of Law
June 18, 2013

E Guild, D Kostakopoulou and S Mantu (ed) The Reconceptualisation of European Citizenship (2014) (Forthcoming) 
Abstract:      
This chapter makes a simple claim. The direct by-product of a purely formalistic application of the national and supranational principles of ‘equality’ strictly within the confines of the different legal orders in, which is the case in the Union today, leads to injustice and is not sustainable. In this situation no one can legitimately claim that basic equality before the law in the Union is safeguarded. More often than not it is even unknown which law is to apply and why and a satisfactory test to resolve jurisdictional conflicts is missing. In this situation EU citizenship is profoundly undermined and the very promise of the European integration project is ditched by formalism. To have future, the Union is bound to turn to the concept of justice seriously, providing for the ability to guarantee meaningful equality for its citizens.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 31

Keywords: EU law, citizenship, equality, principle, rule of law, federalism, wholly internal situations, reverse discrimination, discrimination, non-discrimination, substantive equality

Full text available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2281296