The constitutional quality of the free movement provisions: looking for context in the case law on Article 56 TFEU

One of the pervasive narratives in EU law is that the free movement provisions have significant (and problematic) constitutional implications. In consequence, many scholars have offered interpretations of free movement that offer a more appropriate constitutional vision of the EU. This article suggests – in surveying the case law in diverse areas such as healthcare, labour law, and gambling – that we can only fully understand the constitutional quality of the free movement provisions if we contextualise their effect within specific and discrete policy domains. A genuinely constitutional understanding of free movement ought to judge the quality of the jurisprudence of the Court primarily in light of its capacity to attain or (conversely) subvert the normative objectives of a certain policy domain.