Limits rising, duties ascending: The changing legal shape of Union citizenship

Abstract

This article demonstrates that there has been a generational shift towards the rising significance of conditions and limits, and a less explicit but discernible ascension of duties, in the application and interpretation of citizenship rights. Articles 20 and 21 TFEU provide for the restriction of rights by both primary and secondary law, but the extent to which this now occurs calls into question the existence, and not just the exercise, of the foundational primary rights. The article argues that there has been a hegemonic attribution of supremacy to secondary law that fails to engage the constitutional protocols epitomizing the Union legal order more generally.