Book Review: Freedom of Movement of Persons. A Practitioner's Handbook

AuthorFrans Pennings
Published date01 June 2002
Date01 June 2002
DOI10.1023/A:1020528623350
Subject MatterBook Review
European
Journal
of
Social Security, Volume 4/2,
193-194,2002.
©Kluwer
Law
International (KL1). Printed in the Netherlands.
Book Review
193
Joanna Apap, Freedom
of
Movement
of
Persons. A Practitioners Handbook. Kluwer
Law International, The Hague, 2002. 507 pages. [ISBN 9041117687]. 150
Writing a practitioner's handbook on the free movement of persons is a good idea.
If
a person wants to go to another Member State or an employer wishes to send one
of his employees abroad, many questions arise, such as: Where do I have to regis-
ter? To which institution do I have to pay contributions? How can I know whether
my qualifications are accepted in the host State? Which forms do I have to complete
in order to obtain a particular benefit? What will be the income effects of moving to
another State? The answers to these questions are not easily found in existing hand-
books.
For this reason I was eager to read this attractively produced, hard-cover hand-
book. However, it does not answer questions such as those listed above and is rather
disappointing.
It
starts with a short introduction in which the unresolved problems
of free movement are summarised. The exposition is so short that it will be hard for
non-experts to follow. The Directives, Regulations and case law concerning free
movement are then summarised in 167 pages. Article 39, Regulation 1612/68, and
the Directives on the right to reside in another Member State are discussed.
Regulation
1408171
is discussed in 12 pages. A remarkably large part of the book
(30 pages) is devoted to those who have (as yet) little or no free movement- i.e.
third country nationals.
The account of the law is restricted to the main points. Although this is under-
standable, the question arises as to how useful this is for practitioners. Ifthey are not
familiar with ED law, it will be hard to understand. A number
of
important topics
are not explained systematically while others, such as access to the Court of Justice,
are not discussed until the end of the book. For those already familiar with the main
aspects
of
ED law, this handbook will give insufficient new information, since it
does not provide a detailed and systematic account of the consequences of particu-
lar rules or case
law.
Although the book includes a bibliography, there are norefer-
ences in the footnotes to authors, to indicate the source of the information or give
suggestions for further reading.
The cover claims that this is the first book to bring together the relevant
Directives, Regulations, court judgments and policy statements dealing with the free
movement
of
persons in the ED. There are, however, several other books which have
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SECURJTY

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