Fulvia Ristuccia

I am Assistant Professor in 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 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 teaching experience as a contracted lecturer at Bocconi University, where, in a.y. 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, I delivered the course on EU law, covering institutional and constitutional aspects of the law of the European Union and EU citizenship law.

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

Current research

My PhD dissertation 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, asks 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 core finding is 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

Fulvia Ristuccia, ‘Ties That Bind and Ties That Compel: Dependency and the Ruiz Zambrano Doctrine’ (2023) 60 CML Rev 1227


Fulvia Ristuccia, ‘“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


Fulvia Ristuccia, ‘The Right to Social Assistance of Children in Education and Their Primary Carers: Jobcenter Krefeld’, (2021) 58 CML Rev 877





Teaching 

a.y. 2022-2023 - Assistant Professor in EU law, Maastricht University

Substantive EU law Course (Lectures on free movement of persons) - Hasselt University

Introduction to International and European Law - Maastricht University

a.y. 2022-2023 - Contracted lecturer - EU law class 19 (course director: Professor Eleanor Spaventa) - Bocconi University

a.y. 2021-2022 - Contracted lecturer - EU law class 19 (course director: Professor Eleanor Spaventa) - Bocconi University

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

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

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

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

Research areas

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