Ever since its inception, one of the essential tasks of the EU has been to establish the internal market. Despite the impressive body of case law and legislation regarding the internal market, legal and factual barriers still exist for citizens seeking to exercise their full rights under EU law. This book analyses these barriers and proposes ways in which they may be overcome. Next to analysing the key barriers to exercising economic rights more generally, this book focuses on three areas which represent the applications of the four basic freedoms: consumer rights, the rights of professionals in gaining access to the market, and intellectual property rights in the Digital Single Market. With chapters from leading researchers, the main pathways towards the reduction and removal of these barriers are considered. Taking into account important factors including the global financial crisis, as well as practical barriers, such as multilingualism, the solutions provided in this book present a pathway to enhance cross-border realization of European citizens? access to their economic rights, as well as increasing in the cultural richness of the EU. EU Citizens? Economic Rights in Action is an important book, which will be an essential resource for students of EU citizenship and economics, as well as for EU policymakers and practitioners interested in the field.

Content: Foreword by Catherine Barnard Series Preface PART I EU CITIZENS' ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND BARRIERS TO THEIR EXERCISE: A CRITICAL OVERVIEW 1. General reflections on current threats and challenges to, and opportunities for, the exercise of economic rights by EU citizens Sybe de Vries 2. European 'equalization' rules and the de facto differentiation in Member States' revenues as a barrier to EU citizens' freedoms Flavio Guella PART II THE LEGAL-FACTUAL DICHOTOMY OF BARRIERS TO ECONOMIC FREEDOMS BASED ON THREE CROSS-NATIONAL CASE STUDIES 3. Union citizens and the recognition of professional qualifications: where do we go from here? Silvia Adamo and Tom Binder 4. Enhancing the protection of digital consumer rights in the European Union: the EU Commission's response to geoblocking and geofiltering Anne-Marie Van den Bossche and Maria Teresa Solis Santos 5. Intellectual property rights and barriers to EU citizens: copyright in the light of the Digital Single Market Paolo Guarda PART III HINDRANCES RESULTING FROM THE ECONOMIC CRISIS IN THE EURO ZONE 6. From economic crisis to identity crisis: the spoliation of EU and national citizenships Vassilis Hatzopoulos 7. The charter in times of crisis: the empowerment of economic rights Maribel Gonzalez Pascual 8. Financial crisis and consumers: breaking down barriers to build up new ones? Raul Ignacio Rodriguez Magdaleno, Irma Martinez Garcia and Silvia Gomez Anson PART IV HINDRANCES RESULTING FROM PLURILINGUALISM 9. EU legal language and economic rights interpretation in the Member States Elena Ioriatti 10. Economic Implications of Linguistic Pluralism within the European Union Margarita Arguelles Velez and Carmen Benavides Gonzalez 11. What comes first, language or work? Linguistic barriers for accessing the labour market Silvia Adamo 12. The French language system: between protection and obstacles Celine Lageot 13. EU multilingualism and rivalries of rights: from barriers to plurilingualism Elisabetta Pulice Index