EU Citizenship as a derived status v. a quasi-independent source of rights: an overview of the CJEU’s jurisprudence

The institute of the Union citizenship is initially defined as a derived or complementary legal status. At the same time, a sequential analysis of the CJEU’s jurisprudence on citizenship law suggests an alternative definition, where it performs the role of a dynamic tool giving rise to a constantly evolving range of rights. Such definition eventually goes beyond the concept of the dependent legal status and starts to impose own complementary rules onto the initially autonomous national idea of citizenship.