Building Social Europe Requires Challenging the Judicialisation of Citizenship

Abstract

Which rights should European citizenship entail to protect the achievements of European integration, while overcoming its pitfalls? Should we aim to ‘add stuff’, as Ferrera suggests, or rather follow Joppke’s plea for non-exclusive citizenship rights? I agree with Ferrera’s diagnosis that EU citizenship has an isopolitical bias, it horizontally opens nationally shaped (and financed) welfare systems to citizens from other member states. However, in his ‘detecting of the flaws’ he overlooks the largely judicial genesis of citizenship rights, which are crucial for understanding the shortcomings of EU citizenship.