European Commission fighting to preserve Expat vote

British expats in Spain currently lose the right to vote in the UK after 15 years abroad

The European Commission is investigating the possibility of overhauling a ruling that currently denies EU expats the chance to vote in the country of their birth after 15 years living overseas.

Recently, a number of expats have been fighting their cases in courts all over Europe, and the European Commission has decided to step in to assess a law it feels ‘punishes’ people for living in a country different from their birth…

Currently, if you are an expat then you are entitled to vote in the elections of your nationality for the first 15 years of living abroad. However, after 15 years, you lose that right – and are also denied the right to vote in the country in which you live.

But in a recent press conference for the 2013 EU Citizenship Report, Viviane Reding, the vice-president of the European Commission, said: “We will work on ways to enable EU citizens to keep their right to vote in the national elections in their country of origin.

“The practice in some member states of depriving their citizens of their right to vote once they move to another EU country is effectively tantamount to punishing citizens for having exercised their right to free movement.”

Currently it is estimated that there are 1.7 million Brits living in other EU countries who could see their voting rights restored.