The Status of a Child Who Is a European Union Citizen in the Light of the Right of Residence under Article 20 TFEU

In its recent judgment (C-420/22 NW and C-528/22 PQ of 24 April 2024), the EU Court of Justice once again referred to the concept of ‘deprivation of the substance of the rights conferred by citizenship of the Union’ in the context of a possible obligation of a minor EU citizen to leave the territory of the Union if a right of residence is not granted to a third-country national who is a family member of that citizen. This paper proposes looking into the legal situation of minor EU citizens and their parents who are third-country nationals through the lens of the concept of EU citizenship. It aims to analyse the judgments of the EU Court of Justice, starting with the case of Ruiz Zambrano. What all of them have in common is that all of the parties in the proceedings before national courts are third-country nationals and parents to children who are EU citizens. These judgments helped clarify and systematize both the children’s and the parents’ situations, with important implications for the scope of their rights. The paper thus proposes the systematization of several issues, e.g. the scope of the ‘essence of rights’, its possible limitations, the consequences for both EU and non-EU citizens, the notion of dependence, the obligation to have suffi cient resources and the importance of fundamental rights. The methodology includes an analysis of Court of Justice case law, with special consideration of the facts of cases before national courts, as well as a critical reading of the relevant literature.