In the two and a half years since the Lisbon Treaty came into force, the Court of Justice has issued a considerable number of decisions applying and interpreting the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. This article analyses this first wave of case law with the aim of identifying the impact of the Charter in the fundamental rights jurisprudence of the Luxembourg Court. For this purpose, the examination of the cases is organized around three dichotomies: continuity/change, expansion/restraint, and heteronomy/autonomy. The issue of the temporal scope of the application of the Charter is analysed and the most visible innovations are addressed focusing on quantitative and qualitative changes. Second, the implications of Article 51 on the application of the Charter to the States are examined in light of the latest case law, taking into account the important developments of the status of the citizenship of the Union as an expansive device for the protection of individual rights. Finally, the interplay of the Charter with the European Convention of Fundamental Rights and with the constitutional traditions of the Member States is addressed. It is argued that even though there is a marked trend towards the continuity of the fundamental pillars that have so long been at the basis of the EU fundamental rights system, there are substantial innovations and significant developments that reinforce the role of fundamental rights in the legal order of the Union.

In two recent, revolutionary decisions, - Janko Rottmann C-135/08 and Ruiz Zambrano C-34/09 - the European Court of Justice has firmly emancipated the status of citizenship of the Union from the “cross-border” requirement and has inaugurated a new area for the protection of rights closely linked to the core of sovereignty of States, - nationality and residence. This Article examines these two judgments and argues that they take the construction of citizenship towards a federal status. The “genuine enjoyment of the substance of citizenship rights” has emerged as a new legal category that is capable of providing a uniform and general protection and entails the affirmation of a core of rights of a supranational nature. This new development raises questions as to whether the ECJ's expansionist reading of citizenship constitutes a legitimate exercise of judicial power and as to what will be the relationship between citizenship and EU fundamental rights. We conclude by exploring the potential of the judgments analyzed in terms of placing Union citizenship at the center of the emergence of a constitutional patriotism in Europe.

The reinforcement of the protection of fundamental rights at the European level and the emergence of the status of Union citizenship are two closely connected phenomena. European citizenship has been and continues to be one of the central arguments in favour of the extension of the scope of EU fundamental rights. This argument arises out of a sentiment that vindicates equality at the core of the citizenship of the Union as a fundamental status. Against this background, this paper examines the different possibilities of interconnection between the traditional doctrine of EU fundamental rights and the jurisprudential construction of the citizenship of the Union. Particularly, it will be discussed whether fundamental rights should be placed at the core of the formula that protects the ‘genuine enjoyment of the substance’ of the rights conferred by EU citizenship, inaugurated by Ruiz Zambrano, already latent in Rottmann and substantially refined in an ever‐growing case‐law (McCarthy, Dereci, O. and S., Ymaraga and Alokpa). It will be argued that this formula carries the very valuable potential to reinforce citizenship of the Union as an independent source of rights able to overcome problems such as reverse discrimination. For these purposes, this formula could be considered to encompass not only the absolute deprivation of the ‘genuine enjoyment of the substance of citizenship rights’, but also the existence of serious obstacles thereto.

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Purely internal situations – Fundamental freedoms – Attribution of powers –Ullens de Schooten– Reverse discrimination – Non-discriminatory obstacles – EU citizenship – Preliminary rulings – Jurisdiction of the Court of Justice – Conditions of admissibility of preliminary references