Mobile Europe

The Theory and Practice of Free Movement in the EU

Ettore Recchi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781349591473, 9780230274471
• eBook ISBN: 9781137316028
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

With a particular focus on their integration paths, political participation and identifications, this book draws on large cross-national surveys of this specific population carried out between 2004 and 2012, as well as in-depth interviews and aggregate statistical data from a plethora of sources.

Part I

Theorizing Free Movement: History, Policies, Demographics

1

A Frontierless Continent: History of an Idea and Its Realization

1.

European integration and the right to free movement: an inextricable tie

Although it has never aroused the collective fervour typical of great changes, European integration is the most revolutionary political transformation that has occurred in the West since the Second World War. The exceptional nature of this process is also evident if one adopts a longer diachronic perspective. Rarely – perhaps never – in history has sovereignty been peacefully transferred from polities as strong as the modern European nation states to other and broader organizations.1 Should the world one day achieve a post-national order, it is very likely that Europe will have marked out the path.

The uniqueness of the process of European integration is even more evident if one assumes the standpoint of migration scholars. European Union citizens have opportunities unequalled in comparison with those of migrants in other parts of the world: they can travel, live, study, work and retire in whatever member state of the EU they choose, and once they have settled in that state, they are entitled to the same rights as its citizens – with the only significant exception of the right to vote in national parliamentary elections.2 In cases of possible discrimination (in the workplace, in the property market, in access to health care and so on), they may appeal to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which acts to ensure that citizens of the Union residing in another member state receive equal treatment.3

This does not mean that all EU citizens have the same rights wherever they decide to live, since each member state has its own set of civil, political and social rights (Hix and Høyland 2011, 280–1). Moreover, in practice EU movers’ rights are implemented and ‘contextualized’ through differing national policies (Carmel 2013). In technical terms, both legal and statistical, the citizen of one EU member state who settles in another is still a foreigner. His or her position matches the standard definition of ‘migrant’ as proposed by the United Nations: ‘a person who moves to a country other than that of his or her usual residence for a period of at least a year’ (Alfieri and Havinga 2005, 2). Compared with all other international migrants, however, EU movers’ status does not automatically entail having fewer rights than nationals.4 To a large extent, mobile European citizens are international migrants with the same rights as internal migrants.

Table 1.1 Milestones of the EU free movement regime

1951		European Coal and Steel Community Treaty		Free movement across member states granted to miners and steelworkers with recognized qualifications
1957		European Economic Community Treaty		Free movement across member states granted to workers in all occupational sectors
1968		Council Regulation 1612/68 and Council Directive 68/360		Abolition of all restrictions on the movement and residence of member state workers and their families and prohibition of any discrimination based on nationality
1973		Accession of UK, Ireland and Denmark		British, Irish and Danish citizens entitled to free movement rights immediately
1981		Accession of Greece		Greek citizens subject to seven year transitional measures for full free movement rights
1986		Accession of Spain and Portugal		Spanish and Portuguese citizens subject to seven year transitional measures for full free movement rights (then reduced to six)
1990		Directives 90/364, 90/365, 90/366		Free movement is extended to non-workers (retirees, students, others)
1992		Maastricht Treaty		Free movement defined as part of European citizenship
1995		Accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden		Austrian, Finnish and Swedish citizens entitled to free movement rights immediately
1990s (various dates)		Schengen Treaty		Abolition of border controls between member states
2004		Accession of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus		New member state citizens entitled to full free movement rights immediately in UK, Ireland and Sweden, in 2006 in most EU15
2004		Directive 2004/38		Permanent residence rights for long-term EU movers
2007		Accession of Romania and Bulgaria		Romanian and Bulgarian citizens entitled to full free movement rights immediately in ten member states, simplified procedures elsewhere
2011		End of transitional measures (2004 enlargement)		Citizens of 2004 accession member states entitled to full free movement rights all over the EU
2014		End of transitional measures (2007 enlargement)		Citizens of 2007 accession member states entitled to full free movement rights all over the EU

Migrating in the free movement regime means migrating ‘in first class’. But it has not always been thus. Until a few decades ago, even after the introduction of the free movement regime, the Southern Europeans who worked in Central-Northern Europe were still Gastarbeiter in the eyes of the natives. Their legal emancipation has been coupled with a terminological shift. Noticeably, since the 1970s and 1980s, in the documents of the European Community and subsequently of the EU, ‘migration’, once used to refer to the movement of citizens of one member state to reside in another European country, has been replaced by ‘mobility’ – a more neutral term. In parallel, both the content of free movement rights and the categories of people entitled to them have expanded (Table 1.1). The successive stages of this change are reconstructed in the rest of this chapter.

2.

A brief history of the right to free movement in Europe: the first steps

Differences in historical experience notwithstanding, the abolition of mobility constraints within national borders has been an essential part of the ‘invention’ of modern citizenship (Brubaker 1992; Torpey 2000). From the French Revolution onwards, the right to territorial mobility has been enshrined in the bulk of democratic constitutions. Correspondingly, since Kant’s Perpetual Peace project, free movement across national boundaries was seen as the keystone of a future cosmopolitan order – though with some ambiguity concerning its implementation and limitations (see Archibugi 1995; Habermas 1997; Kleingeld 1998). Federalist thought, and especially the ideas of the British federalists of the early twentieth century, further elaborated this view to make it politically feasible in the European case (Pinder 1996). A direct heir to this cultural tradition and promoter of some of the most influential integrationist initiatives of the immediate post-war period was Winston Churchill. In the autumn of 1942, on the eve of the decisive battle of El Alamein, the then British prime minister wrote thus to Anthony Eden: ‘My thoughts rest primarily in Europe [. . .]. I look forward to a United States of Europe in which the barriers between the nations will be greatly minimized and unrestricted travel will be possible’ (Critchley 1996, 85; emphasis added). A few months later, in 1943, in an entirely independent manner and following the lead of socialist Europeanism (Landuyt 2004, 16 ff.), in Gli Stati Uniti d’Europa e le Varie Tendenze Politiche (which followed the more celebrated Manifesto di Ventotene), Altiero Spinelli gave to a future unitary European state, of which he outlined the features, the principal task of ‘ensuring full freedom of movement for all citizens within the federation’.5

As we shall see, the history of European integration is inextricably tied to the history of realization of this vision of a continent without frontiers. To be noted in this regard is that the founding fathers of a united Europe shared the characteristic of being ‘frontier men’ by birth, as has often been pointed out: Schuman, a native of small Luxembourg poised between German and French influence; De Gasperi, from the Italian Trentino occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and Spaak, from a family of mixed Flemish and Walloon origins (Mayne 1996). All these men, and even more so Monnet, were also ‘mobile Europeans’ in every respect. Schuman studied in France and in Germany (whence he was conscripted into the French civil service during the First World War); the young De Gasperi sat in the Habsburg Parliament in Vienna, to be then elected to Rome, where he lived in the Vatican under fascism; Spaak was exiled to France, Spain, Portugal and Great Britain during the Nazi occupation. Finally, the biography of Monnet perfectly matches the portrait of a transnational European. Born into a bourgeois family in a small French town, as a young man he moved to London to learn English, and then travelled widely on business in Sweden, Russia, Egypt, Canada and the United States, where he lived for many years with his Italian wife (Duchêne 1996).

It was these men who launched the process of European integration. After some false starts (in particular, the aborted European Defence Community), the first successful initiative was the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), one of whose priorities was establishing the right to cross borders.6 In the treaty instituting the ECSC – signed in Paris in April 1951 by representatives of the six states (Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) which would subsequently form the European Economic Community – Article 69 assured removal of ‘any restriction based on nationality upon the employment in the coal and steel industries of workers who are nationals of Member States and have recognised qualifications in a coalmining or steel-making occupation’. Section 4 stipulated that member states ‘shall prohibit any discrimination in remuneration and working conditions between nationals and migrant workers, without prejudice to special measures concerning frontier workers; in particular, they shall endeavour to settle among themselves any matters remaining to be dealt with in order to ensure that social security arrangements do not inhibit labour mobility’.

Historical reconstruc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction – Between Individualization and Globalization: The Long-Term Premises to Free Movement
• Part I: Theorizing Free Movement: History, Policies, Demographics
• Part II: Practising Free Movement: Sociological Perspectives
• Conclusion – Free Movement in Europe: Epitomizing the Age of Mobility?
• Methodological Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index