European Citizenship- Past Present and Future

The meaning of the European Citizenship is not easy to explain. We know themeaning of the words but we might not know how many-sided the implicationsare inside them. After a brief historical overview of the birth of theconcept special attention will be given to particular rights thereofconcentrating on the two most important ones; namely the principle of freemovement and the principle of equal treatment. These rights influence thelife of more than 375 million people living in the European Union. It will showand analyze several cases of the European Court of Justice - proving howEuropean Citizenship can change the life of individual people in differentcountries. This paper is addressed firstly to people working with law lawstudents lawyers mainly to make it easier for them to understand thedevelopments the concept has undergone and secondly to every personliving in the European Union to encourage them to turn to the EuropeanCourt of Justice in case they feel that they were mistrusted or misjudged previously.