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I share Floris de Witte’s concern about the attacks on the EU currently coming from the populist right, a challenge epitomized by, but unfortunately not restricted to, the Brexit campaign in the UK. However, I doubt that the best way to answer such misleading rhetoric is to make rhetorical counter-claims. Rather, it is to show that their views are largely without foundation and that far from undermining national citizenship, EU citizenship and free movement defend it in the context of the normative and empirical challenges of an inter-dependent world. States provide the infrastructure on which the rights of citizens depend, with democratic citizenship as the ‘right of rights’, since it enables citizens to shape that infrastructure in ways that allow them to claim their rights on equal terms to each other. However, as a matter of consistency, citizens have a duty to show the citizens of other states equal concern and respect not only as shapers of the rights within their own state, but also as possessing the right to freely move to other states, and so not be arbitrarily disadvantaged through being born in one state rather than another, so long as such movement allows both the home and the host states to continue to supply the rights of their citizens. I call this argument cosmopolitan statism. It indicates how one can support free movement rights while still holding to the very statist arguments de Witte seeks to challenge. It also offers a plausible characterisation of the nature and role of Union citizenship.

Should EU citizenship ‘be primarily about free movement’? According to Floris de Witte, free movement as the core of EU citizenship can contribute to emancipation, justice, and the distinction between the ‘nation’ and the ‘state’ within the EU. I share his view that these objectives ought to be important to European integration in general and to EU citizenship in particular. But I am not fully convinced that free movement as ‘the central thing that EU citizenship should be about’ will automatically result in more just and emancipated relations between EU citizens.

There is a darker side of freedom of movement. Notwithstanding its apparent emancipatory effect for the individual citizens, which may well outweigh what is lost in terms of non-participation, freedom of movement tends to decrease, rather than increase, republican freedom in Europe.

In his kick-off text, Floris de Witte argues that the value of free movement lies in its capacity to emancipate the individual from the nation state, to recalibrate questions of justice and democracy, and to sever ties to a homogenous political ‘community of fate’. My contribution builds on empirical research on intra-European mobility and elaborates on his first claim on emancipation. I offer two factors to support my interpretation of the strong link between free movement and EU citizenship: 1) the development of the very concept of European citizenship is at least partly the result of a longer history of free movement and 2) the concrete advantages of EU citizenship are strongly linked to free movement. I finish with the conclusion that free movement makes the EU also for those Europeans who have not exercised their right to move.

Floris de Witte’s spirited defence of free movement focuses on EU integration through law. But there is something important missing in his story. The battle for freedom of movement and European integration is no longer fought primarily in the courts where individual rights trump majority preferences; it is increasingly fought in polling statioins, parliaments and the mass media. In order to survive, European integration through law will have to be complemented with integration through democracy, by winning the hearts and minds not only of mobile Europeans, but of immobile ones as well.

As long as the EU continues to present refugees as a problem to be kept at bay, with repeated promises to strengthen its borders against unwanted arrivals, those of us who wish to defend freedom of movement as a core component of EU citizenship have to ask ourselves not just about Europe’s ‘immobile’ citizens who associate free movement with unpalatable costs, but about the people on the wrong side of the territorial and civic borders who are paying the ultimate price.

EU citizenship is not about the centralisation of rights and about replacing the democratically legitimated substance of national laws by uniform European ones. Instead, the value of EU citizenship lies in the opportunity it offers to EU citizens to take up residence in another Member State to pursue their dreams and ambitions. But while this is so, we should not forget that its value is not uniformly accepted by all Union citizens. Neither should we ignore that free movement never was meant to be unlimited.

I concur with those who claim that EU free movement should be defended on a normative as well as practical level. But it is only so much that EU freedom of movement can deliver. We cannot expect that as a standalone policy it would ‘recalibrate justice’ for marginalized minorities in the EU. Considering the position of EU Romani migrants, we can see that in practice EU free movement does not necessarily address injustices produced by natioin states. In fact, it can also result in new injustice that is not present on the nation-state level.

Free movement is under attack, both within Europe and at the frontier. How to defend it? In these comments, I show that there is no need for complex and controversial arguments regarding the superiority of a cosmopolitan identity. The best defence is simpler and, in one important sense, less controversial. We start with a set of basic liberties that are widely recognised and show how free movement is a prerequisite to their realisation. We also note something too often overlooked: freedom of movement is valuable for everyone, including those who never migrate.

With Brexit, UK citizens will lose freedom of movement, and Europeans resident in Britain will lose the protection afforded by Union citizenship. More worrying still, Brexit threatens to unravel the postwar achievements of European integration. The EU must act to ensure that Brexit is a failure. It can do this by crafty deployment of a carrot and stick strategy. The stick should come in the form of refusing the UK any privileged access to the Single Market without accepting freedom of movement. The carrot comes in the form of citizenship-based freedom of movement. One step in the right direction would be for the EU to move towards a form of Union citizenship unmediated by any prior national citizenship. Many UK citizens will jump at the opportunity.