Citizens and EU law - The real world

There is an emerging body of EU law for Europeans who travel, move, live, love, work, parent, retire or divorce across borders within the European Union. There are still lacunae, but the application, the realities on the ground, are the main focus of the report Alain Lamassoure MEP has prepared for president Nicolas Sarkozy.

‘Le citoyen et l’application du droit communautaire – Rapport au Président de la République’ (8 June 2008; 188 pages) looks at the problems of EU citizens face outside their country of origin, but inside the European Union. Cross-border families are one example.

The report is posted on a number of web pages. One of them is Toute l’Europe:

http://www.touteleurope.fr/fileadmin/CIEV2/entretiens/Rapport_definitif_8_juin_2008.pdf

The perspective is French: EU citizens living in France and French citizens in other EU countries. But Lamassoure uses materials of general applicability, and he suggests that France uses its Council presidency to propose concrete measures to ameliorate the situation of cross-border persons and to inspire other EU member states to take a closer look at their laws and practices.

Taking into account how much corporations are at the centre of textbooks on European Community law, Lamassoure’s report is a valuable source for students and researchers of European law and politics, as well as migrant EU citizens.

Lamassoure looks at the human side of European integration.


Ralf Grahn