Union Citizens, Free Movement and Self-Sufficiency

Free movement rights has played an important role in the European integration since the beginning. From the early 1990s the link between free movement and economic activity has become loose pursuant to Directive 90/364 and then the Union citizenship provisions of the EC Treaty. The paper covers basically three questions. It extends to the restructuring of the secondary Community law concerning free movement which resulted in the Directive 2004/38/EC. It gives an overview on the connection between citizenship and nationality of Member States and outlines the bounds of the Member State competence in deciding who and for what reasons may be qualified as Union citizen. In the end, the author analyses the problem of self-sufficiency which is one of the most important condition for free movement of economically non-active Union citizens