My My Hey Hey: is free movement here to stay?

Free movement rights are a core principle of the whole European integration project and at the same time the hub of the EU’s migration regime. We can hardly neglect its exceptionality in a world of nation states and increasing rigidities to international migration. Simply, there is nothing alike on the globe. Mobility schemes in other international governance systems, like ASEAN, are restricted to workers and do not grant political rights at all. We should not forget that today freedom from state control on individual settlement is still restricted even within some countries – most noticeably in China, where the hukou system is the source of huge inequalities of rights and access to public services. For long this achieved utopia has been prized by most Europeans. It has even been thought of as THE EU policy par excellence. Recurrent EB surveys show that free movement is the EU in Europeans’ minds. This association is no longer that positive. Free movement has increasingly come under attack and entered the Euroskeptics rhetorics. There is more than some reminiscence of the Polish plumber craze, which yes halted the Constitution but never really challenged free movement itself. This time anti-mobility is not only a media campaign but has already changed the legal framework of free movement, even though not in the EU but in a prominent neighbouring state with strong bilateral agreements. Building on this concrete achievement, the end of the free movement regime is top of the agenda of political parties that may well reach a critical mass in the new European Parliament. A setback of the free movement regime would probably mark the turning point of the European political project altogether. Free movement is the Maginot line of a real Union. But to save it, it is entirely misleading to focus on its economic benefits – this was a huge mistake of the EC in particular. Free movement is no panacea to Europe’s economic malaise – especially in the short term. Supporters would rather be defending it as a civilizational achievement. There is now abundant research showing that its cultural and legitimacy returns are huge, larger than any other factor we know