EU Citizens’ Economic Rights in Action: Re-Thinking Legal and Factual Barriers in the Internal Market

Ever since its inception, one of the essential tasks of the EU has been to establish the internal market. Despite the impressive body of case law and legislation regarding the internal market, legal and factual barriers still exist for citizens seeking to exercise their full rights under EU law. This book analyses these barriers and proposes ways in which they may be overcome.

Next to analysing the key barriers to exercising economic rights more generally, this book focuses on three areas which represent the applications of the four basic freedoms: consumer rights, the rights of professionals in gaining access to the market, and intellectual property rights in the Digital Single Market. With chapters from leading researchers, the main pathways towards the reduction and removal of these barriers are considered. Taking into account important factors including the global financial crisis, as well as practical barriers, such as multilingualism, the solutions provided in this book present a pathway to enhance cross-border realization of European citizens’ access to their economic rights, as well as increasing in the cultural richness of the EU.

EU Citizens’ Economic Rights in Action is an important book, which will be an essential resource for students of EU citizenship and economics, as well as for EU policymakers and practitioners interested in the field.

Edited by Sybe de Vries, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, Elena Ioriatti, Paolo Guarda and Elisabetta Pulice, University of Trento, Italy