Acceso usuarios
Niamh Nic Shuibhne
Two judgments delivered by the Court of Justice in March 2014 - the rulings in Siragusa and O - are set to make significant contributions to debates about the scope of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU citizenship law respectively. Building on Akerberg Fransson and Melloni, the decision in Siragusa further develops the narrative on when Member States are "implementing" Union law for the purposes of art.51(1) of the Charter, through demonstrating a sufficient connection between contested national legislation and relevant Union law. In O, the Court sharpened the conditions under which art.21 TFEU protects a Union citizen who has exercised free movement rights and has now returned to the State of which they are a national, introducing a concept of genuine residence. The implications of both judgments will unfold through further discussion; but it is worth reflecting on two preliminary questions at this stage: where did these tests actually come from, and what "constitutional weight" do they (therefore) carry?.
Article 51(1) of the Charter states that its provisions are addressed to the Member States when they are implementing Union law. Initial guidance on the reach of Union law in this respect was developed well before the Charter had binding legal effect; in fact, even before the Charter was drafted - the decision in Annibaldi, for example, mentioned national measures that "intended to implement a provision of [Union] law", but it also raised the relevance of other criteria such as the objectives pursued by those measures. In a separate line of case law, the notion of "sufficient connection" was used to delineate hypothetical situations that, for that reason, fell outwith the scope of Union law altogether. These two pods of jurisprudence were knitted together in Iida,7 with the key principles then restated in Siragusa as follows
