Trade, regional integration, and free movement of people

Abstract

A building block of regional integration in Europe has been the development of supranational rights, particularly the rights of citizens of member states to live elsewhere in the community. Since the first free movement rights in the early 1950s, the concept of a common EU citizenship has hardened into law, most famously in the Court of Justice’s oft-repeated assertion that “Union citizenship is destined to be the fundamental status of nationals of the Member States.” By contrast, efforts to foster the free movement of people in groupings such as CARICOM, the Andean Community, MERCOSUR, and UNASUR have so far been relatively modest. Nevertheless, actors within each of those organizations have or are considering supranational rights, thus it is useful to ask about the prospects of common free movement rights and perhaps eventually citizenship, focused foremost on the right of member state nationals to live and work elsewhere within the community. The paper’s underlying argument is that successful and stable regional integration efforts must include free movement rights for people.