Challenges of the Knowledge Society (Jun 2022)
BENEFITS OF BEING AN EU CITIZEN – AN OVERVIEW IN THE CONTEXT OF THE UK’S DEPARTURE FROM THE EU
Abstract
Whilst joining the EU entails numerous rights and obligations for the acceding state, in areas ranging from custom duties to agriculture to judicial cooperation in both criminal and civil matters, the EU Member States’ citizens and residents themselves also gain a considerable number of advantages, some immediate and deriving directly from the newly-obtained EU citizenship, like the right to travel to and reside in any other Member State, and some less immediately or frequently exercised, but just as – if not more – important, such as having their fundamental rights protected through the dispositions of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, or living in a healthy environment that is protected, at a European level, through numerous regulations and directives. When a state leaves the EU, as the United Kingdom has recently done, the citizens – and, depending on the case, other residents – of that state lose all these added legal, economic, and social safeguards. This paper sets out to analyse the benefits enjoyed by the people living in the EU, compared to those residing outside its borders, using the UK’s withdrawal from the EU – the first state to ever do so – as an opportunity to look at the same group’s rights before and after such an event.
