With relation to the expulsion of Roma people on behalf of France, a recent meeting of several Secretaries of the Interior in Paris has evoked the issue of the expulsion of EU citizens.
Directive 2004/38 foresees, at article 7, the citizens of member States that move to another member State must prove to have a medical insurance and enough financial resources to support himself and his relatives, so as to not represent a burden for the welfare system of the country of host.
While the expulsion measures, limiting the freedom of circulation of EU citizens, are disciplined by article 27 and refer to the threats to the law and order, to public safety or to the public health system and not to the economic reasons pointed in article 7.
This is the problem raised in Paris given the fact that the country of host has no effective expulsion instruments towards those citizens that do not respect the conditions envisaged by directive 2004/38 at article 7 but do not belong to the type of violations mentioned by article 27.
In fact the decision to turn to the national welfare system to supply the lack of personal resources must be evaluated together with other elements (duration of stay, family bounds, integration etc.) and cannot be the reason for an automatic expulsion.
A position mainly held by those who fear that the right to free movement could be invalidated by the expediency of few people and want clearer and stricter rules in order not to foment restrictive policies of governments towards foreign citizens of the EU.
The reasons for these concerns of some member states are not enough, however, to justify the partial modifications of the laws that are limited to the strengthening of the sanctioning instruments at disposal of the States, without reinforce the peculiar nature of European citizenship.
The risk is in fact one of depriving EU citizenship of its innovative character and its function of integration through a free and simple circulation of citizens inside the Union.
The Court of Justice has maintained that, under the principle of the useful effect, to the right of free movement introduced by the European citizenship, an extent must be recognized that goes far beyond what was ratified by the previous law, which guaranteed such right to the workers, by imposing requirements much stricter for the “inactive” foreigners. And if some limits can be applied, they must not clash with the principles of proportionality and reasonableness.
The rights concerning the EU citizenship are, as it is known, very limited, also because it has a secondary function in comparison with national citizenships, of which it follows the rules for the acquisition. Could it be possible to add to the EU citizenship and socio-economic dimension?
Everybody can see the huge and constant discrepancies existing among the systems of national welfare, in terms both of public expenditure and of preferences of the citizens, and the strong jealousy for the respective fiscal policies of those States that have already been deprived of their monetary power (in the Eurozone). In a Union that recognizes, because of the crises, the need for a real co-ordiantion of economic policies, such a reflection can maybe not sound like a heresy.
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