136 M. van den Brink How to defend free movement It is, for this reason, also that I think his suggestions might be counter-­ productive. To understand why, let’s consider de Witte’s objections against the ‘emergency brake’. As a matter of principle I agree that this emergency brake is unnecessary and unjust. Whether the Court should also strike it down or interpret it away if it were ever adopted is a different matter. If de Witte believes that the boundaries of free movement set by the Citizenship Directive should have been ignored by the Court in Dano, he must also believe that the ‘emergency brake’ should be annulled. If, after all, the Member States should not be allowed to deny benefits to the economically inactive, he certainly must think that the Court should prevent benefits to be withheld from the economically active. Now, let’s assume that the majority of the UK electorate had voted to remain part of the EU. Following the referendum, the Citizenship Directive would have been amended so as to include an emergency brake to give effect to the UK renegotiation. If the Court would decide to strike down these amendments large parts of the UK electorate would predictably be outraged and support for free movement would likely further erode. The question thus also is how to defend free movement. If it is left to the Court alone to decide on the scope of the mobility rights of EU citizens, and certainly if that means disregarding legislative decisions, those who are hostile towards free movement are even less likely to support free movement. Problematically, absent support for free movement principles among EU citizens, this right will be difficult to sustain. I agree, therefore, with Rainer Bauböck’s argument that the aim must be also to convince immobile Union citizens of EU citizenship’s value. Contrary to Bauböck, however, I am uncertain how this is to be achieved by working towards what Daniel Thym calls ‘a vision of social justice for the Union as a whole’. Thym explains, correctly in my view, that ‘free movement did not substitute national policy preferences with a supranational vision of social justice’, but thinks that the Court should foster such a uniform supranational vision. With all respect, I think it would be highly problematic for the Court to do so, not only because such judicial behaviour is likely only to reinforce the backlash against the EU, but also because as Seyla Benhabib once explained with admirable clarity ‘[s]ocioeconomic justice and criteria by which to examine it cannot be identified independently of democratic freedom and self-determination … Precisely