12 Colum. J. Eur. L. 293 (2005 – 2006)
Michiel Brand, Department of European and International Public Law, Tilburg University.
The Bidar judgment constitutes a most welcomed development for Europe’s migrant students as far as their rights to financial assistance covering their maintenance costs in the host Member State are concerned. Even though this case presents good news for the Union’s citizens in that it is part of a wider jurisprudential drive towards reducing the gap between the economically active and the inactive, the Court’s reasoning is not entirely convincing. The ECJ’s solution is not the optimal one in terms of legal certainty and the Court also does not succeed in easing the tensions with secondary EU-law that were already apparent in Grzelczyk, the “predecessor” of Bidar.
