The European Parliament introduced new provisions to ensure that EU citizens with disabilities living in another EU country have reinforced rights to participate in the political process. These provisions were set in two reports adopted on 14 February 2023 concerning the political rights of EU citizens living in another Member State of which they are not national – the so-called mobile EU citizens.
These two reports are the Parliament’s stance concerning the two laws (Directives) proposed by the European Commission on the rights of mobile EU citizens to participate in the European Elections and in the municipal elections.
The European Parliament has a strong say in these legislative proposals, but the competence to adopt these Directive falls solely on the Member States represented in the Council. Additionally, these legal revisions come in parallel to the Parliament’s proposed new EU electoral law, which the Council is also studying.
What has the Parliament adopted concerning persons with disabilities?
The Parliament specifies that all EU citizens should have the right to vote “regardless of legal capacity”. Furthermore, a provision states that the legal capacity status decided by a citizen’s country of origin should not make them ineligible to stand as a candidate in elections to the European Parliament if the law in their country of residence does not prevent them.
This means that the 13 countries which uphold the right to vote regardless of legal capacity status, and the 8 which uphold the right to stand as candidates will not need to discriminate against non-national EU citizens with disabilities. And it will mean that people with disabilities who enjoy these rights in their home Member States will not lose them when moving to another EU country.
Concerning equal access to the elections, the Parliament proposes that all measures to facilitate the right to vote to nationals with disabilities should be put in place also for non-nationals EU citizens with disabilities. In addition, the information provided to voters must comply with the accessibility requirements set in the European Accessibility Act, and in accessible formats of information and communication such as “Braille, large print, audio-based information, tactile stencils, easy to read information and sign language”.
Why are these Directives important?
The EU Treaties guarantee that any EU citizen living in another country must have the right to participate in European and municipal elections under the same conditions as nationals of that country.
As EDF highlights in its Human Rights Report on political participation, the political rights of persons with disabilities differ greatly depending on the country they live in. Therefore, when moving to another country, certain persons with disabilities may lose political rights or, according to the Commission proposal, the country of residence may deny the right to vote simply because the person’s home country does it too. We explain all this in the EDF position paper including proposals for amendments for the Mobile EU citizens Directives.
For more information, please contact Alejandro Moledo, Deputy Director and Head of Policy