The nature and extent of ‘educational rights’ under EC law: A review

Abstract

Education has emerged as an important topic within EC law for a number of reasons. These include the predominant position of education within national social and economic policies and the potential impact of a broader non-national perspective on these policy issues both at the supra-national and the ‘global' level. Other reasons relate more closely to the specifics of the EU integration and single-market projects, namely the close links between migration and education, especially as regards the status and treatment of the children of EU migrants, and the role which 'education' can and might play within a 'polity-in-the-making' such as the European Union, in terms of generating some sense of 'Europeanness'. In that sense, there may be an 'educational' content to Article 8 EC, which proclaims the establishment of a form of Union 'citizenship’ (Shaw, 1997).