K.A and others – The Zambrano Story Continues

By Sarah Progin-Theuerkauf

On 8 May 2018, with the judgment in K.A. and others vs. Belgium, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) has added another piece to the now quite big puzzle that surrounds the legal status of EU citizens (and their third country family members). It ruled that Article 20 TFEU can be violated if a Member State refuses to examine a request for family reunification of a EU citizen with a third country national solely on the basis of an existing entry ban against the third country national. The Court argued that if the refusal compels the EU citizen to leave the territory of the EU as a whole, it deprives EU citizens of the genuine enjoyment of the substance of the rights conferred by virtue of their status. Like in the Zambrano case, the EU citizens in K.A. had never exercised their right to free movement.

Just a quick reminder of the Court’s main findings in Zambrano: In that case, Belgium had denied a right of residence to a Colombian father of two Belgian minors. The Court held that, by not giving the father of a Belgian child a derived residence right, Belgium will oblige the child to leave the territory of the EU as a whole, and therefore deprive the child of the genuine enjoyment of the substance of the rights’ conferred by the EU citizenship status. This was argued – and here is the revolutionary aspect – that this even applies in purely internal situations, e.g. where the EU citizen has never exercised his or her right to free movement. Normally, EU law only applies in situations with a cross-border element.

Facts

The case submitted to the ECJ for a preliminary ruling concerned seven third country nationals (TCN) residing in Belgium (para. 18 et seqq.). They were all ordered to leave and banned from entering Belgium, some on grounds of a threat to public policy. Thereafter, the TCN filed applications for a residence permit in Belgium, based on their family relations with a Belgian citizen (some argued they were dependent descendants of a Belgian citizen, others were parent of a minor child in Belgium or a lawfully cohabiting partner in a stable relationship with a Belgian citizen). The competent Belgian authorities refused to examine their applications for family reunification based on the existing entry bans. Under Belgian law, an entry ban in force cannot be extinguished or suspended unless an application for its withdrawal or suspension is lodged from outside Belgium. It is also noteworthy that the Belgian citizens with whom the TCN claimed to have family relations have never exercised their right to freedom of movement and establishment (para. 40).

Continue here please: http://europeanlawblog.eu/2018/05/22/k-a-and-others-the-zambrano-story-continues/

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