114 P. J. Neuvonen According to Floris de Witte, free movement can advance a ‘more inclusive way of thinking about what freedom, justice, equality and participation should mean in the EU’. He also writes that free movement as the core of EU citizenship ‘benefits all those citizens – whether they make use of it or not’. Here we encounter the question of whether all EU citizens are able to enjoy the right to free movement. I agree with Daniel Thym’s point that, if we take seriously the argument that free movement ‘ought to be available under similar conditions for all nationals of the Member States’, a more comprehensive account of social justice is still needed for the EU.2 The idea of free movement may indeed be central to actualising the principles of transnational justice. But it will then be seen as a tool for justice, rather than as an end of EU citizenship. It seems difficult to justify the non-economic right to free movement and residence without first accepting a more independent equality objective for EU citizenship. Any reference to EU citizenship as an equal status nevertheless raises a set of difficult questions about belonging and solidarity. According to Richard Bellamy, EU citizenship must not bring about the demise of the ‘political infrastructure’ that advances the degree of solidarity that is arguably required for securing many rights within the Member States. Bellamy’s account holds that just relations between citizens can be understood as ‘relations of those who share a social space’. But his statist conclusion becomes less self-evident if we assume that ‘a social space’ can also be constructed transnationally. If equality is understood as a ‘normative ideal of human relations’3, the important question for EU citizenship, as well as for the existence of the EU as an ‘emergent polity’4, is whether it is possible to construct meaningful relations for the purposes of equal treatment outside the context of ex ante belonging. It seems to me that the argument of self-realisation through free movement does not yet adequately take into account the relational potential of EU citizenship. In his contribution, Floris de Witte refers to ‘a ‘stateless’ or ‘anchorless’ idea of belonging and community’ as the ‘strength’ of EU citizenship. Although his argument of free movement as an ‘emancipatory force’ seeks to challenge ‘communitarian ties’, I hope it would also say more about whether those relationships that constitute a meaningful ‘social 2 3 4 For further discussion see e.g. Kochenov, D., G. de Búrca & A. Williams (eds.) (2015), Europe’s Justice Deficit. Oxford: Hart. E.g. Scheffler, S. (2007), Equality and Tradition: Questions of Value in Moral and Political Theory. Oxford: OUP, 234. E.g. Wiener, A. & V. Della Sala (1997), ‘Constitution-making and Citizenship Practice – Bridging the Democracy Gap in the EU?’ Journal of Common Market Studies 35 (4): 595, 596.