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In a quarter-century of judicial scrutiny and scholarly debate, the relation between Union citizenship and the right to free movement has mostly been considered from the perspective of host Member States and their obligations. The role of home Member States has remained marginal and only been considered in conjunction with a restricted set of situations. This article presents the perspective of home Member States. Through a systematic analysis of the relevant case law, it distinguishes between three sets of obligations of home Member States in the context of the right to free movement: facilitation, guarantee and non-deprivation obligations. These obligations substantiate a key role of home Member States that finds only formal definition in the Treaties: home Member States are the very enablers of supranational citizenship and, in doing so, they transform and upgrade national citizenship. This upgrade points to alternative explanations for the “return to the national” that part of the literature equates with the supranational citizenship’s failure. It also yields a novel perspective on two unsolved problems in the relation between citizenship and free movement, namely the source of transnational solidarity, and the place of non-mobile citizens.
