British councillor in Spain petitions Europe for expats' right to vote in national elections
Thursday, November 13, 2014 @ 9:41 AM
A BRITISH councillor living in Spain has gone to the European Commission Petitions' Committee to call for all EU citizens to be able to vote in their country of residence.
Jacqui Cotterill, from Parcent (inland Alicante province) is campaigning to change voting laws on two counts.
At present, any British national who has lived outside the UK for a continuous 15 years is not entitled to vote in general elections in their native country, making Britain one of the few EU member States whose citizens do not have a universal voice wherever they are in the world.
And as nobody in the world is allowed to vote in a country they are not a citizen of, this effectively means Britons have no voice at all – a situation which is anti-democratic.
Harry Schindler, 92, who lives in Italy, has been campaigning for some time to get the UK government to lift the 15-year rule.
Indeed, should current Prime Minister David Cameron decide to call a referendum in 2017, as planned, on whether or not Britain should pull out of the European Union, anyone who has not lived in the UK since 2002 will be unable to vote – even though those Brits who emigrated to EU countries are far more likely to be affected by such a referendum than any native still living in the UK.
read more at thinkSPAIN.com