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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