European Citizenship As a Game Changer for Student Mobility and Transnational Study Finance in the European Union

Today, European university students enrolled at a higher education institution in another member state enjoy broad residence and welfare rights on the basis of European citizenship. However, these achievements tarried for several decades compared to respective rights that migrant workers enjoy: despite European Citizenship already having been introduced through the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, it had only been accelerated in the course of recent jurisprudence by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). After its landmark judgment of 2001, Grzelczyk, other important cases had been decided, such as Bidar, Förster, Giersch, Thiele Meneses or Elrick.

This paper will trace the development of European Citizenship, including particularly the judicialisation of its legal provisions. The research will, thereby, detail how European Citizenship has altered respective residence and welfare rights for non-economically active citizens living in another member state by taking the example of mobile university students’ access to cross-border study finance. Specifically, this paper attempts to delve into the current discrepancy of European member states, which, at the one hand, struggle through adequately financing their welfare systems in times of crisis, and on the other, have partly agreed to measures of solidarity, including some redistributive elements, within the Union. This development is particularly interesting with regard to welfare policies as these have largely been integrated through CJEU case law albeit being foremost a member state competence according to relevant EU Treaty provisions and secondary legislation. Altogether, this process-tracing will be conducted via systematic document analysis and semi-structured expert interviews.