Judgment_paragraph 23 · Secretary of State for the Home Department v M. G (C-400/12)

23In that regard, it should first be noted that the Court has found that, while recitals 23 and 24 in the preamble to Directive 2004/38 certainly refer to special protection for persons who are genuinely integrated into the host Member State, especially if they were born there and have spent all their life there, the fact remains that, in view of the wording of Article 28(3) of that directive, the decisive criterion is whether the Union citizen lived in that Member State for the 10 years preceding the expulsion decision (see Case C-145/09 Tsakouridis [2010] ECR I-11979, paragraph 31).