The European electoral law only grants voting rights to EU residents. This means the votes of Europeans living in the UK and Switzerland could be ruled out
Ahead of this year’s European elections, Italians resident in the United Kingdom will receive no call to vote at the consulate nor a ballot paper to send via post as is the case for the country’s general elections. In order to vote in the elections to the EU parliament they will have to return home to Italy to their council of origin.
This scenario is just one of the many unexpected consequences of Brexit. Italians in the UK will lose their right to elect their representatives in the European parliament directly from their country of residence. Until 2014, the year of the last continent-wide elections, those living in Great Britain and enrolled in the Register of Italians living Abroad (AIRE) could choose whether to vote in their own British constituency or in Italy. Even those staying temporarily in the country, for example Erasmus students, could vote at the consulate if they submitted their request in advance. From this year, however, in order to vote they will need to head back to their own municipality in Italy, unless of course there are some last-minute surprises, such as the UK postponing the country’s effective withdrawal from the EU or new measures being implemented by the Italian government.
The explanation for the current state of affairs is that the Italian law concerning the right to submit a postal vote from abroad does not apply to European elections, while the law concerning the European elections only allows voting from abroad for those resident in other countries in the EU. Few people were aware of this.
In the absence of any further information (at the moment of going to print, the website of the Italian consulate in London still cited the option of voting in the United Kingdom), the discussion has lit up Italian and European Facebook Groups with enquiries about whether Italians in the UK will be able to vote and comments that their potential exclusion from the European elections coincides with the increased importance of Europe in light of the Brexit issue.
“At the last European elections, when the United Kingdom took part, I received the documents to vote at the Italian consulate. They specified that I could vote for either an Italian or British Euro-parliamentarian, not in both countries. I chose to vote for a British representative on that occasion. I expect to receive the same communication but this time only with the possibility to vote for an Italian candidate,” says Claudia Borgognoni Holmes in an exchange of messages. Claudia is an Anglo-Italian who has lived in London for years and has founded the association UK CEN (UK Citizenship for European Nationals). The aim of her group is to help Europeans obtain British passports in order to avoid being excluded from important British plebiscites like the Brexit referendum. But no one had imagined that Brexit would also have consequences for their voting rights as Italians.
The London office of Comites, the Committee for Italians abroad, has also been caught wrong-footed. “With everything that’s going on with Brexit, our priority is to guarantee that Italians who have been here for decades can maintain their rights concerning pensions and national insurance. We didn’t even think about the problem of European elections,” explains president Pietro Molle.
Massimo Ungaro, European member of parliament from Italy’s Democratic Party and a representative of Italians abroad, has written to Italy’s Ministry of the Interior and Foreign Ministry to request clarification. “It is currently estimated that there are more than 700 thousand Italians living in the United Kingdom. If we add to these the estimated 300 thousand in Switzerland, there are more than one million Italians entitled to vote who are residing in geographical areas in Europe where they will be unable to do so […] at least unless they undertake a journey back to the peninsular,” he says.
Ungaro has called for transitory measures to ensure the right to vote from these two countries and encourage participation, “also in the context of the significant socio-political impact of Brexit and citizens’ recent disaffection with the EU institutions”. Consulted at the time of going to print, the Ministry of the Interior had not responded to these requests and initiatives.
But Italy is not the only country in this situation. Bulgaria and Greece have similar rules. The Czech Republic, Malta, Slovakia and Ireland deny citizens the right to vote from abroad, or limit these rights substantially.
A study of the EU parliament in 2013 described the obstacles encountered by European residents abroad and citizens of third countries resident in Europe in exercising their right to vote.
At the last European elections, only 22 countries out of 28 guaranteed their citizens residing in another EU member state the possibility to vote, and 18 of these provided the same right for residents outside of Europe. Many countries moreover exclude citizens from third countries, a group that is even more numerous, including those who have been resident in the country for a considerable time.
The study concludes that the elections for the European Parliament remain in many ways a “national” ballot. In spite of a softening over the years, the right to vote from abroad is more often guaranteed for legislative elections. There is a lack of common rules and the fact that every country determines different electoral legislation means that there is no real equality in exercising the right to vote.
It is not surprising that voter turnout for those resident abroad is much lower compared with national averages. The causes of this are a lesser interest in the political debate and electoral campaigns based on national issues, but also obstacles to the possibility of voting.
“While national governments have given the EP power over far-reaching legislative and budget decisions, the national political elites have been unwilling to create a pan-European democratic space,” write Stefan Lehne and Heather Grabbe of Carnegie Europe, a research institute specialized in international affairs. “European parliamentarians are elected from national lists, according to each country’s election laws, and national political parties have kept an iron grip on the electoral process. Thus, EP elections have more resembled twenty-eight national elections than transnational contests.”
This election, however, is different from the others. At stake is the future of the world’s only parliament elected directly by citizens of different countries. It will be the first election since the establishment of the European Parliament in 1979 without the participation of the United Kingdom.
400 million electors will be called to appoint 705 representatives. Due to Brexit, the number will be lower than the current 751 but Italy will see its number of representatives rise from 73 to 76 thanks to the redistribution of 27 of Britain’s 73 seats.
According to Carnegie Europe, the populist parties could obtain sufficient seats to be able to block important decisions for the future of Europe. But at the same time their rise could create the opportunity for electoral campaign to involve a continental-scale debate.
Faced with the spectre of declining voter turnout (from 62% at the 1979 elections to 43% in 2014) and disinformation attacks and fake news, the European parliament is running for cover. The campaign thistimeiamvoting.eu has been launched to encourage participation and a new app will enable users to see “what Europe does for me” by tracing decisions and funds that have had an impact on people’s daily lives.
Faced with all of this, denying the vote in some countries seems to be somewhat of an anachronism. Alessandro Martinez, an Italian manager who has recently moved from the United Kingdom to Switzerland, regrets not being able to vote from abroad. “I didn’t know about these rules and I’m very sorry about this. I think that with today’s technology there should be the means to enable Italians who don’t reside in the European Union to vote,” he says.
@Claudiacomms
This article is also published in the March/April issue of eastwest.
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The European electoral law only grants voting rights to EU residents. This means the votes of Europeans living in the UK and Switzerland could be ruled out
