The Court and the Legislators: Who Should Define the Scope of Free Movement in the EU? Martijn van den Brink Introduction Floris de Witte makes the case for free movement as the core of EU citizenship and offers three reasons in support. I agree with these principles, at least in the abstract. De Witte’s vision certainly is normatively more appealing than the one of scholars who have pushed for a decoupling of EU citizenship from free movement. In fact, it is hard to see how EU citizenship cannot revolve to a very large extent around the right to move freely within the EU and to choose the preferred Member State of settlement. But if that is the case, de Witte seems to be asking the wrong question. What he seems to address is not the question of whether free movement should be defended, but how that should be done; through which procedures free movement is to be given shape. Free movement as the core of EU citizenship De Witte is concerned about the Dano decision and sees it as an attack on free movement. No doubt, the decision is a departure from earlier case law and signifies a move away from the very extensive interpretation of the free movement principles present in certain earlier decisions. Still, de Witte’s opinion of the case as well as the way he uses the decision to support his claim is remarkable and not fully persuasive. First, let’s for a moment think about the difference EU citizenship has made. If one would have claimed in the mid-1990s, shortly after the introduction of EU citizenship, that in 2016 many EU lawyers have serious misgivings about a decision that denies social assistance benefits to an economically inactive EU citizen with very weak links to the Member State of residence, many would have been quite surprised about such a claim. The transformation brought about by EU citizenship has in that sense been remarkable. But was free movement not the core of EU citizenship before the Court started developing this concept in its case law? Of course it was. In fact, that so many lawyers thought EU citizenship to be a meaningless © The Author(s) 2019 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating European Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89905-3_27 133