Past Event: The COVID-19 Crisis: Free Movement, Borders and the testing of Union Citizenship

19 Jan 2023

The Covid19 crisis and the response of the European Union institutions raises serious questions about free movement, the Schengen area of internal movement, the role of Union law and institutions in the management of crisis and the robustness of Union citizenship. The seminar will address these questions, including the broader role of Union citizenship in times of crisis.  Speakers include Professor Daniel Thym, University of Konstanz, Dr Nathan Cambien, University of Antwerp and Professor Dora Kostakopoulou, KU Leuven. 

Thursday 19 January, 2023 at 4pm-6pm (GMT). 

The COVID-19 pandemic, coming in the latest in a series of challenges for the European Union, is a key moment for European integration with coordinated action on health policy, in particular vaccine procurement, and the launch of a significant budgetary programme based for the first time on common debt instruments and direct intra-Union transfers. These are achievements for European integration. However, the COVID-19 pandemic also represented a profound crisis for another area of European integration: the free movement of persons and the Schengen system of open borders. More broadly it called into question the role of European Union law and institutions in responding to and managing crises which directly impact central dimensions of European integration, including Union citizenship.

As the pandemic took hold in Spring of 2020, all Member States closed borders and restricted free movement rights, leading to the closure of national territory, a fracturing of the common space of Union citizenship and a certain epidemiological nationalism. Union action at the time was limited to coordinating restrictions and ensuring the free flow of goods and peoples, later complemented the construction a common European entry ban. Throughout the crisis, this co-ordination took ever more elaborate forms with a colour coded system and the eventual development of a COVID-19 passport, legislated for at a European level, Restrictions on free movement and border controls were however left largely in the hands of the Member States. The crisis and the response of the Union institutions raises serious questions about free movement, the Schengen area of internal movement, the role of Union law and institutions in the management of crisis and the robustness of Union citizenship. The seminar will address these questions, including the broader role of Union citizenship in times of crisis

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