Life after the ‘Dano-Trilogy’: Legal Certainty, Choices and Limitations in EU Citizenship Case Law

Welfare entitlements of EU Citizens, especially those who are not economically active, were always controversial. This chapter will show that the European Court of Justice, in a line of cases starting with the Förster decision,1 started to develop quite coherent caselaw based on Directive 2004/ 38, which linked equal treatment as regards social benefits to legal residence under Directive 2004/ 38.2 Despite one or two exceptions, this approach was gradually consolidated in followup cases, such as Ziółkowski and later Dano. The decisions taken by the Court are of course always embedded in a complex mixture of legal and nonlegal factors, which all have likely contributed to the Court’s attitude and approach.3 However, it will be shown that the Dano judgment can be seen as a product of rather conventional evolution of case law after the adoption of Directive 2004/ 38, rather than a fullon departure from the preexisting