Union Citizenship As a Game Changer for Higher Education Systems in Member States

The year 2001 marked a new avenue of European welfare integration since the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) defined, in its Grzelczyk case, Union Citizenship as the fundamental status of nationals of Member States (MSs), granting them independent welfare rights across the European Union (EU). Moreover, this case marked another approach in solving cases concerning access to higher education (HE) in the EU.

Before Grzelczyk, the CJEU used internal market provisions (free movement of labour and free movement of services) to grant students from guest MS access to host MS HE systems. Secondary internal market rules were connected to national regulations, leaving the concern to observe equal treatment of Union citizens to MS. However, since Grzelczyk European Citizenship seems to be the key to regulate access of students. This could implicate that the possibility to regulate parts of social welfare has shifted from MSs to the EU, without the EU being confined by the necessity to substantiate a connection with internal market provisions. Furthermore, it could also imply that the EU has the possibility to implicitly alter MS social welfare systems without their consent.

With this paper I aim to investigate what elements of MS HE systems have been altered by CJEU jurisprudence since 2001. Furthermore, I aim to assess to what extent this demonstrates autonomous EU influence on MS HE systems as instances of national welfare systems. To conclude, I attempt to extrapolate possible further change in MS HE systems.