The Court and the Legislators: Who Should Define the Scope of Free… 137 because there is no certainty on these matters even among experts, judgments as to who constitutes the “worst off” in society or in the world at large require complex democratic processes of opinion and will-formation’.4 On this issue Floris de Witte seems to agree.5 But it is precisely because of his emphasis on the importance of deciding issues of great normative salience through democratic processes that I struggle to understand his Court-centred perspective when what is at stake is the question from what moment in time mobile EU citizens are to be given full equal treatment. The EU’s legislative process might be far from perfect in this regard, but it is comparatively superior, democratically speaking, to the judicial process. I think, therefore, that a plausible case can be made for the Dano decision from this angle. Furthermore, if our concern is to persuade those who are hostile towards free movement – if not of its value, then at least of the reasons why it should be respected – then defining the limits of free movement through the legislative process seems preferable. This at least allows us to explain to those who are sceptical of free movement that the rules in place were adopted on the basis of procedures in which their national governments were involved. Conclusion All of this does not change that I agree with de Witte that EU citizenship scholars should value free movement more than they tend to do. EU citizenship is not about the centralisation of rights and about replacing the democratically legitimated substance of national laws by uniform European ones. Instead, the value of EU citizenship lies in the opportunity it offers to EU citizens to take up residence in another Member State to pursue their dreams and ambitions. But while this is so, we should not forget that its value is not uniformly accepted by all Union citizens. Neither should we ignore that free movement never was meant to be unlimited. One may deplore this and criticise the status quo for being unjust, but that alone is insufficient to claim that the Court should change the scope of the free 4 5 Benhabib, S. (2004), The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens. Cambridge: CUP, 110–111. See, de Witte, F. (2015), Justice in the EU: The Emergence of Transnational Solidarity. Oxford: OUP, 54.