Fulvia Ristuccia

I am Assistant Professor of EU law at Maastricht University. I obtained my PhD at Bocconi University, with a dissertation on free movement of persons and EU citizenship. I hold an LLM in European Law from the College of Europe in Bruges, where I was Academic Assistant in ay 2017-2018, and I completed my master’s degree in Law at Università degli Studi Roma Tre.

My research interests lie in EU constitutional law, EU citizenship, and free movement of persons. In June 2022, I defended my PhD, which focuses on the free movement of persons and European citizenship exploring the intersections between EU citizenship and free movement of workers law through the lenses of social citizenship. Beyond my PhD thesis, I have also engaged with the topic of EU citizenship law in my publications.

Concerning teaching, I have substantial teaching experience on institutional and constitutional aspects of the law of the European Union, EU substantive law, and EU citizenship law.

I am a qualified lawyer admitted to the Bar of Rome.

Current research

My current research agenda focuses on the role and position of EU citizenship in the EU constitutional system, its interaction with EU identity-building through law and the fundamental rights implications of EU citizenship law.

The distributional implications of EU citizenship and transnational solidarity are still part of my research agenda as I keep working on themes related to my Ph.D. dissertation, which analysed the differentiated access to social citizenship for economically active and inactive citizens. Market citizens, ie citizens who engage in some meaningful sense with economic activities in the internal market, have a more privileged position in their access to welfare than economically inactive citizens. It is a common assumption that the reason for this is that movement of market participants is economically beneficial in a commutative solidarity perspective.

The core research question, therefore, asked why market citizens remain privileged and whether this is justifiable in light of the arbitrariness that privilege entails. Based on case law and doctrinal analysis combined with an overview of economic data and theories on free movement of persons, my research aims at underlining the discrepancy between the economic discourse and the legal scholarly rationalisation. The main finding was that the economic rationale for free movement of economically active persons is both inconsistently pursued in the legal framework and normatively debatable for the commodification and exclusions it implies.

In light of that finding, a minimalistic approach to free movement, that would justify the privileges of market citizens in their access to transnational solidarity essentially based on the economic roots of free movement, is not a legitimate mechanism to shield free movement from further contestation through a transactional view of transnational solidarity and it is in contrast with the way free movement for persons has developed and should strive to be.

Publications

Ristuccia F, ‘Book Review “Free Movement and Welfare Access in the European Union: Re-Balancing Conflicting Interests in Citizenship Jurisprudence”, written by Victoria Hooton’ (2024) 26 European Journal of Migration and Law 535;
Ristuccia F., ‘European identity through free movement law? The interactions between Union citizenship, free movement of persons, and EU values’, in Quaderni AISDUE – serie speciale V Convegno annuale AISDUE “Il diritto dell’Unione europea nei rapporti tra ordinamenti: tra collaborazione, integrazione e identità” (Quaderni AISDUE, Special Issue 1/2024);
Ristuccia F. and Spaventa E., ‘The Role of Judges in Academic and Political Discourse’ in Dawson M., de Witte B. and Muir E. (eds), Revisiting Judicial Politics in the European Union (Edward Elgar Publishing 2024);
Ristuccia F., ‘Ties that Bind and Ties that Compel: Dependency and the Ruiz Zambrano Doctrine’, (2023) 60 CML Rev. 1227;
Ristuccia F., ‘Di addii e benvenuti: l’applicazione della giurisprudenza Ruiz Zambrano alla residenza del familiare non UE di un cittadino UE che non ha mai vissuto nell’Unione’ (BlogDUE, 3 October 2023) <https://www.aisdue.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Ristuccia-BlogDUE.pdf>;
Ristuccia F., ‘The status of worker in EU free movement law: a difficult balance between equality and economic integration’, in Amoroso D. and others (eds.), More Equal than Others?: Perspectives on the Principle of Equality from International and EU Law (TMC Asser Press 2023);
Ristuccia F., ‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run: Untangling the effects of the expulsion of “undesired” Union citizens: FS’ (2022) 59 CML Rev. 889;
Ristuccia F., ‘The Right to Social Assistance of Children in Education and Their Primary Carers: Jobcenter Krefeld’, (2021) 58 CML Rev. 877.

https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/en/persons/fulvia-ristuccia

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5347-7035

Research areas

European Union Law; EU citizenship; Constitutional Law; Free Movement Law; Fundamental and Social Rights; Administrative Law

Teaching

Since February 2023, Assistant Professor of EU law, Maastricht University:

Law of the European Union (tutor and planning), a.y. 24-25

EU Citizens: Rights and Remedies in EU law (course coordinator, lecturer, and tutor), a.y. 24-25

EU competition law (tutor), a.y. 23-24

International and European Law (tutor and planning), a.y. 23-24

Substantive EU law Course (Lecturer), Hasselt University, a.y. 22-23

Introduction to International and European Law, a.y. 22-23

a.y. 2022-2023 - Lecturer - EU law (course director: Professor Eleanor Spaventa) - Bocconi University

a.y. 2021-2022 - Lecturer - EU law (course director: Professor Eleanor Spaventa) - Bocconi University

a.y. 2020-2021 - Teaching Assistant - EU Law - Professor Eleanor Spaventa - Bocconi University

a.y. 2019-2020 - Teaching Assistant - Public Law - Professor Justin Frosini - Bocconi University

a.y. 2019-2020 - Teaching Assistant - Diritto dell'Unione Europea - Professor Eleanor Spaventa - Bocconi University

a.y. 2017-2018 - Academic Assistant at the College of Europe

Grants and awards

Award by Associazione Italiana Studiosi di Diritto dell’Unione Europea, for the best article published in a journal on EU law, IV ed. (2024) – awarded for the article: Ristuccia F., ‘Ties that Bind and Ties that Compel: Dependency and the Ruiz Zambrano Doctrine’, (2023) 60 CML Rev. 1227.
Co-funding by Studio Europa, Research Fund Faculty of Law Maastricht University, SWOL – Grant for the co-organisation of the conference: “Between narratives and reality: The EU at the gates of a new mandate”, June 2024;

Contact

fulvia.ristuccia@maastrichtuniversity.nl

https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/f-ristuccia