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Free movement of Persons and Residence: Directive 2004/38/EC

By Bartolus

A while back we mentioned the singular lack of enthusiasm of the member States to bring into effect Directive 2004/38/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 29th 2004 on the right of citizens of the Union and their family members to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member States. Most member State had failed to implement it by the due date, April 30th 2006.

The Commission has recently announced that it has made a report on the implementation of Directive 2004/38/EC. According to the official press release, it makes for depressing reading:

All Member States have adopted national laws to protect the right of EU citizens and their families to move and reside freely within the EU.
Although national laws in some areas treat EU citizens and their families better than EU law requires, not one single Member State has transposed the Directive effectively and correctly in its entirety. Not one Article of the Directive has been transposed effectively and correctly by all Member States.
The overall transposition of the Directive is rather disappointing.
Only Cyprus, Greece, Finland, Portugal, Malta, Luxembourg and Spain have correctly adopted more than 85% of provisions of the Directive.
Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Slovenia and Slovakia, on the other hand, have correctly adopted less than 60% of provisions of the Directive.

But there's always a bright side, according to the Commission:

"This is mitigated by the fact that incorrectly transposed provisions of the Directive seem to be , at least in a number of cases, correctly applied by the national courts and authorities, despite the absence of written and clear guidelines for the exercise of judicial and administrative discretion in this area."

The Commission has issued a short memo giving some more details and some background on Directive 2004/38/EC. The full report is available here.

Full post as published by EU Law Blog on December 15, 2008 (boomark / email).