The last decade has witnessed the development of a growing phenomenon, the expulsion of European Union (EU) citizens from a host Member State. While the EU encourages its citizens to use their fun-damental right of freedom of movement, citizens moving to other Member States continue to encounter legal obstacles, in some cases leading to expulsion. Recently, there has even been strong political pressure in some Member States to reconsider the benefits of the principle of free movement, which has been built progressively since the foundation of the European Community. This restrictive ap-proach has arisen against the background of the global economic crisis, which occurred just after the enlargement of the EU to economically poorer countries of Central and Eastern Europe, leading to more nationalistic and protectionist measures, which have legal consequences for EU citizens on the move. This article analyses the legal grounds for expulsion under EU law and the safeguards that pro-tect EU citizens residing in host Member States. Examples of expulsions from Member States in recent years are noted, and possible ways of overcoming current issues are proposed.

This contribution examines the legal powers that Dutch authorities have to restrict the right to free move-ment of mobile but ‘unwanted’ EU citizens, including measures that seek to expel and ban EU citizens from re-entering the Netherlands. The article defines ‘unwanted’ EU citizens as mobile EU citizens in re-spect of whom national authorities seek to take measures to restrict their right of residence, either on the grounds of their being an unreasonable burden on the Dutch social assistance system or in respect of public policy and public security. We analyse the relevant EU legal rules, their interpretation by the Court of Justice of the EU and their national implementation and application in order to show the legal con-straints faced by national authorities when seeking to restrict EU mobility. This legal study is supple-mented by a discussion of existing data on the number of EU citizens expelled or removed from the Netherlands. Our analysis suggests that, due to the legal protection enjoyed by mobile EU citizens against measures restricting their residence rights, the Dutch authorities encourage voluntary departure as a pragmatic solution to the presence of ‘unwanted’ EU citizens.