This Thursday, 23 May, 53 million voters were called to go to the polls in the United Kingdom to elect 73 MEPs from 12 constituencies.
Along with the Dutch (13.5 million voters), voters in the United Kingdom were the first to kick off the European elections, but they did so in a particularly troubled political context, Mrs May’s government having announced again that day that the House of Commons vote on the law concerning the EU withdrawal agreement, scheduled for early June, will be postponed again.
As soon as this Friday, 24 May, Prime Minister May is also expected to announce the terms and conditions and, in particular, the precise timetable for her departure; several British media are even predicting that she might resign over the weekend. Mrs May already said that she would leave her position, but she had initially set that date to be after the much-talked-about vote in the House of Commons.
While Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party was well ahead in the polls the eve of the election, the first criticisms also appeared in the middle of the day regarding how the election was being conducted with “the3milllion”, an association that protects European expatriates in the United Kingdom which reported that it was impossible for Europeans to cast their votes. According to the association, quoted by several media outlets, Europeans living in the United Kingdom have reportedly not received the right documents or not received them on time; hundreds of cases had already flooded social networks with the hashtag ‘#deniedmyvote’.
The British Electoral Commission acknowledged that some voters had been unable to vote and said it understood their frustration. However, it reiterated the rules and emphasised in a statement that the voter’s voting rights must have been transferred from the voter’s country of origin to the United Kingdom at least 12 days before the election. In addition, the government’s belated announcement of the election in the United Kingdom had an impact on compliance with this requirement.
When asked about this, the European Commission explained at noon on Thursday that the electoral process was a national matter and that it was therefore not responsible. In any case, the institution has reiterated its position on the domestic situation: the withdrawal agreement as negotiated between the current leader and the Europeans will not be open to renegotiation any longer with or without a new British Prime Minister, such as Boris Johnson, who is a candidate to succeed Mrs May. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)