Nationality Discrimination in the European Internal Market

Despite the high-flown rhetoric of civil society, it cannot be denied that discrimination is still with us; it has merely gone "underground". In the European project, and particularly in the etiology of the EC Treaty's commitment to the free movement of persons, defenders of national sovereignty are often also defenders of inequality. This text offers a fresh approach to this all-important issue that exposes, in rigorous and well-informed detail, a polity that defines discrimination correctly but then refuses to see it where it occurs. It approaches the law of free movement from a point of view that is regrettably uncommon: neither that of market integration, nor that of Member State sovereignty within the Union, but that of the individual dignity subsumed in the state-citizen relationship. Focusing on the relevant caselaw of the European Court of Justice, the author shows that the law of cross-border movement in Europe can - and should - be guided by the principle of non-discrimination; and that, despite inconsistencies in its judgments, and a tendency to retreat to the neutral language of economics, the Court is "haunted" by the discriminatory principles inherent in formalistic European legal systems. Its jurisprudence will ultimately restructure them to impose respect for difference and equality before the law.