The European Court of Justice decided today on a case about the right of the EU Member States to deny social security benefits to EU citizens coming from other EU countries if they didn't fulfill the economical threshold, i.e proof of sufficient financial means in order to reside in the respective country. By reading the decision I was under the impression that the European Union is moving backwards in its pathway towards a real European unification. Notwithstanding the fact that the Union has made significant steps in hiking its endeavors for materializing a Europe without borders, which to some extent has been attained, yet the European integration is not a completed process. It is an undeniable reality that since the EU Directive regarding the full free movement for EU Citizens coming from Romania and Bulgaria was enacted and entered into force in January 2014, many European countries such as Germany and the UK had to be confronted with a considerable spillover.

For obvious reasons by enjoying free movement within the EU an EU citizen has automatically access to the public health, social security etc. of the country where he or she resides. This was the case of a Romanian citizen that was decided upon by the European Court of Justice today. The Court of Justice basically restored once more the principle of subsidiarity, established in Article 5 (3) of the Treaty on EU, which gives the EU Member States a significant discretion in the decision-making within their territory as long as this does not diverge with the Union’s prerogatives.

Art. 5 (3):

“Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.”

The right to claim social security from the residing country is without doubt a right which has been covered and regulated by the European Union but the Member States are about to withhold the right to arbitrarily decide and refuse the inclusion of certain citizens in the social security scheme on a case by case basis. The European Court of Justice in the case of Elisabeta Dano, Florin Dano v. Jobcenter Leipzig reinforced this right of the member states by giving them the chance to exclude “inactive EU citizens who go to another Member State solely in order to obtain social assistance”. The word “inactive” in this case means that Ms. Dano according to the Job Center in Leipzig has repeatedly refused to work. And the Court in this case relied on the European directive which gives the right to Member States not to grant social security benefits to citizens for the period of the first three months. If this period extends 3 months but is less than 5 years whereby the citizen does not show proof of sufficient financial resources he or she can not claim the right to benefit from the social security system of the residing country and might even be asked to leave the country.

The legal framework seems pretty clear now, the European Court of Justice gave another green light to EU countries to encapsulate their social security systems. If one person does not satisfy the requirements of the specific job centers this means he cannot rely on European law either, as the national law has gained supremacy The European integration is going uphills isn't it? Indeed the European citizens can move freely in the EU but what about other rights, such as residing and being treated as an equal citizen of the hosting country. This was allegedly the original idea behind the European Union, a Union without restrictions where everyone that at least lives within its borders can exercise its given rights, wasn't it?