ECIT Foundation on European Citizens’ Rights, Involvement and Trust

Fighting EU Overseas Voters’ Disenfranchisement

Every European election, millions of EU citizens who have exercised their right to live and work in another member state discover the limits of that right at the ballot box. They can vote in local elections. In some cases, they can vote in European Parliament elections. But in nine member states, the moment they move – or after a fixed number of years abroad – they lose the right to vote in their own country’s national elections 

ECIT argues that millions of EU citizens lose their right to vote in European Parliament elections entirely once they move outside the EU altogether – since that right, unlike national voting rights, is tied to residence within a member state. It’s a related but distinct problem from the one at the centre of this case, which concerns citizens who move within the EU and lose their national vote.

 

The ECIT Foundation, a Brussels-based think tank working since 2015 on European citizenship, has been building the case against this gap for years. Its youth-led initiative, Voters Without Borders (VWB), grew out of an attempt to launch a European Citizens’ Initiative demanding full political rights for mobile EU citizens who can vote locally and in European elections but not nationally – a population ECIT originally estimated at around 13.7 million, a figure the Foundation is now revisiting in light of updated data. While the ECI itself did not collect enough signatures its de mandate were taken up in a resolution of the European Parliament on ” parliamentarian, European citizenship and democracy” Moreover, VWB  became a recognised advocacy brand in its own right, building a network of around 50 partner organisations.

In 2023, ECIT and VWB took the issue directly to the European Commission. Drawing on a report analysing disenfranchisement rules in the UK, Germany, Cyprus, Denmark, Ireland and Malta, the Foundation filed a complaint asking the Commission to open infringement proceedings against the countries stripping mobile citizens of their national voting rights. The Commission declined, holding that the conduct of national elections falls outside the scope of EU law – a familiar and frustrating answer for advocates working at the edges of EU competence.

Rather than treat that response as a dead end, ECIT is going back with a stronger case. We were glad to match ECIT with the Brussels office of a global law firm to help build and file a renewed complaint – this time covering nine member states, with a broader base of supporting organisations and named plaintiffs than the original submission. The increase in Member states reflects ECIT’s position that disenfranchisement is not only de jure but also de facto when EU citizens living abroad are obliged to travel back home to vote. 

 

Two recent rulings from the Court of Justice of the EU add legal weight ECIT didn’t have in 2023. In Commission v Czech Republic (C-808/21, 19 November 2024), the Grand Chamber held that mobile EU citizens’ political rights under Article 22 TFEU extend beyond the bare right to vote and stand for election – in that case, to the practical ability to join a political party – and tied that reasoning directly to the EU’s democratic principle under Articles 2 and 10 TEU. And in Commission v Malta (C-181/23, 29 April 2025), the Court confirmed that even matters formally reserved to member states, such as the granting of nationality, cannot be exercised in ways that undermine the essence of Union citizenship.That is undermined if the right to vote which is the gold standard of citizenship, is denied. ECIT argues the two rulings cut against the Commission’s 2023 position: if national competence over citizenship and political participation must still respect the substance of EU citizenship, there’s a credible case that the same logic extends to national rules that strip mobile citizens of the vote entirely.

The Brussels Pro Bono Committee of the law firm is currently finalising the complaint: verifying the underlying numbers, confirming the full list of supporting organisations and plaintiffs, and completing a detailed report on the nine countries’ disenfranchisement rules that will accompany the filing as supporting evidence.

The timing gives the case added weight in another way, too. The United Kingdom recently abolished its 15-year rule and introduced “votes for life” for British citizens abroad – a reform ECIT’s original report helped put on the public record. Germany still applies a 25-year cut-off, while Cyprus, Denmark, Ireland and Malta strip the right to vote the moment a citizen leaves the country. The contrast between a country like the UK moving toward permanent enfranchisement and others removing it immediately is exactly the kind of comparative evidence that makes ECIT’s case difficult to dismiss as a national quirk rather than a pattern.

Beyond the complaint itself, ECIT and the pro bono lawyers are also working on a further, more structural idea: a proposal for a dedicated fund to support future legal action defending voting rights. If it comes together, it would give ECIT and its network a standing resource for the kind of cross-border litigation and advocacy that voting rights cases typically require – rather than having to assemble support case by case.

None of this guarantees a different outcome from the Commission than in 2023. EU competence over national elections remains genuinely limited, and the Commission may again decline to act. But the renewed complaint is deliberately built to be harder to wave away: more countries, more evidence, more organisations standing behind it, fresh case law to lean on, and a live example – the UK’s own reform – showing that change on this exact issue is not just conceivable but has already happened elsewhere.

For Pro Publico, the collaboration is also a reminder of what pro bono partnership can offer beyond any single case. ECIT came to the match with years of research, a functioning advocacy network, and a clear legal question. What it needed was the capacity to turn that groundwork into a properly constructed complaint – checked, evidenced and ready to withstand scrutiny. That is the gap the pro bono lawyers have stepped in to fill.

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Thanks to @Tony Venables, @ECIT @Francesco Zatelli, @Pro Publico