Union citizenship was created to provide a closer bond between the European Union and the nationals of the Member States. It provides a frame for rights to move and reside throughout the EU, and to work and live in conditions of equality and non-discrimination within a host Member State. Union citizens also have the right to be accompanied by their families when they move, even if the family members are not Union citizens themselves. The very power and scope of these rights can make them controversial. The question of whether and when Union citizens should have access to benefits, whether their same-sex family arrangements should be recognised in Member States that do not allow same-sex marriage themselves, and the extent to which Member State nationality law is constrained by the fact that each Member States national is also a Union Citizen, have all been the subject of much discussed case law.

In the act of cheating, the cheater (mis)represents himself as conforming with the norms. What prevents constitutional cheating (and resulting arbitrariness) from prevailing in a constitutional democracy is moral and cultural restraint among constitutional actors, resulting from the restrictions and conventions that decent politicians, administrators, and lawyers accept. Moreover, there are institutional mechanisms of constitutional and subconstitutional supervision that patrol the abuse and other misapplications of the law. These are the first to disappear in illiberal democracies. Here the legislative branch and the judiciary engage in professionally indefensible gimmicks. The unfaithfulness to the principles of constitutionalism and the narrowness in interpretation disclose the importance of cheating with law as a central legal and social technique of illiberal democracy. The various legislative and interpretative techniques of legal cheating (circumvention, circularity, denial of facts, denial of jurisdiction, etc.) become systematic in illiberal regimes, undermining public morality.