The Place for Prisoners in European Union Law?

Abstract:

In recent years, a territorially unbounded power to imprison individuals within the European Union (EU) has been developing. Such a dynamic has significantly impacted on EU citizenship law, which in turn has been strengthened by basing on residence the conferral of many rights. In this article, I investigate what role prison and prisoners can have in EU law, with specific regard to EU citizenship. In order to answer such a question two scenarios are outlined, which embody the ways in which detention and Union citizenship have intertwined hitherto.

Firstly there are intersections between EU-grounded detention and EU citizenship. This group includes actual connections (as is the case of Wolzenburg, Koslowski, Lopes Da Silva and I. B. Court of Justice of the European Union [CJEU]’s decisions), as well as interplays which have not concretized yet (as shown by the Framework Decisions on transfer of prisoners and on probation measures). Secondly, the mutual influence between state-grounded detention and EU citizenship is worth analysing. Recent CJEU cases such as Onuekwere and M. G. demonstrate that detention is capable of significantly affecting the rights provided for by EU citizenship. By reading these two scenarios through the conceptual couple integration/reintegration, I show strengths and weaknesses of the conditions of prisoners as EU citizens.

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