Resumen de Bold, but Without Justification?: Tjebbes
Tjebbes (Court of Justice, judgment of 12 March 2019, case C-221/17 [GC]) builds on and extends the scope of a line of existing cases that has started to redefine the relationship between EU citizenship and Member State nationality. This Insight inquires on which legal grounds the Court of Justice could justify its bold intervention in the domain of nationality law. The Court offered two justifications, saying that the Member States must "have due regard to EU law" when deciding on the attributions of nationality and that EU citizenship "is intended to be the fundamental status of nationals of the Member States". I argue that neither justification is persuasive and possible to square with the Treaties. The Insight also examines the requirement introduced by the Court of Justice that the rules on the loss of nationality must have due regard to the principle of proportionality and allow for an individual examination of the consequences of that loss. I argue that the desirability of such a proportionality requirement is not nearly as self-evident as the Court takes it to be.
