The Relationship between EU Citizenship and the Right to Vote
The Relationship between EU Citizenship and the Right to Vote

Author(s): Gábor Kurunczi
Subject(s): Electoral systems, EU-Accession / EU-DEvelopment, EU-Legislation, Sociology of Law, Comparative Law
Published by: ADJURIS – International Academic Publisher
Keywords: EU citizenship; right to vote; electoral systems; generality of right to vote; interoperability of right to vote;
Summary/Abstract: One of the important questions of European integration and the history of the EU's development is whether the European community can move from an Europe of nations to the concept of a United States of Europe, and whether this is even a good goal for European integration. In a Europe unifying towards statehood, elections (and voting rights) must necessarily unify. This study examines the relationship between EU citizenship and the concept of electoral law (i.e. the definition of active and passive eligibility) – based on the analysis of the primary legal sources and the literature. In my opinion (based on my research), at the current stage of integration, it is not realistic to consider an alternative that would place EU citizenship (at least in terms of voting rights) alongside or even above national citizenship, either for European Parliament elections or for national parliamentary elections. However, while in the case of elections to the European Parliament there is a regulatory principle (namely nationality) which could at least be added to national citizenship as a kind of subsidiary rule, in the case of elections to national parliaments a change of the rules to an EU citizenship-based approach seems unthinkable.

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