The future of individuals in the European Union: the ever dear market citizen.

The article aims to explore the evolving role of the individual within the European Union by using the Union citizenship as a revealing lens. In particular, the scope is to question the emancipatory effect of the Union citizenship in the process of overcoming the paradigm of market citizen. Despite the erosive effect of the Court of Justice case-law on the above mentioned paradigm, and the devising of a comprehensive status to EU citizens, the EU's conception of the individual has remained, after all, economic. This emerges with particular clearness from the comparison between the statuses provided to third-country nationals legal migrants and the Union citizenship: an individual are granted more and more secure rights, the more it exercises an activity economically relevant for the market, or if the citizen is, at least, economically neutral because self-sufficient. It concludes, therefore, by affirming the lasting good health of the market citizen paradigm.