The Conditionality of EU Freedom of Movement: Norm Change in EU Actors' Discourse

Freedom of movement (FOM) in the European Union has become a highly salient issue in political and public debates. Most of the literature on FOM is heavily focused on Courts and their interpretation of the right (Heindlmaier and Blauberger 2017; Verschueren 2014; Guild 2004) or on national level contestation of FOM (Heinikoski 2015; Roos 2017; Balch and Balabanova 2017). However, the EU and its institutions as political actors that define and shape the content and meaning of FOM are largely absent from this literature. If mentioned, EU actors are often depicted as ideological and orthodox defenders of FOM. We argue that this perspective is empirically inaccurate leading to skewed theoretical assumptions. It does not only overlook an EU level discourse on FOM that has changed significantly in recent years, but it also omits that even fundamental rights and key pillars of EU integration can be subject to discursive norm change at the EU level. A frame analysis of documents from the European Commission, the European Council as well as the European Parliament from 2004 to 2016 forms the basis of our argument. We detect that restrictionist arguments have increasingly entered EU actors’ discourse on FOM over this time frame. While considered almost an absolute right of EU citizens in the 2000s, frames on FOM in the 2010s strongly emphasize the conditions underlying the exercise of the right. In other words, EU actors are engaged in a political rather than judicial debate as to what FOM means.