On Thursday 9 June, the Court of Justice of the European Union handed down a judgment (Case C-673/20) in which it ruled that British nationals who enjoyed the rights attached to European citizenship no longer enjoy, as a result of Brexit, the right to vote and stand as a candidate in municipal elections in their Member State of residence.
This judgment follows the proceedings brought by a British national who had been living in France since 1984 and was removed from the electoral roll and could not vote in the March 2020 municipal elections in her municipality of residence.
She had argued before the court which referred the case that she no longer had the right to vote and stand for election in the UK because of the UK rule that a British national who has been resident abroad for more than 15 years is no longer entitled to vote in UK elections.
In this judgment, the CJEU held that EU citizenship requires possession of the nationality of a Member State and that there is no provision in the Treaties conferring the right to vote and stand for election in a Member State on a national of a third country.
Furthermore, the Court states that the fact that a national of a former Member State has transferred, even before the end of the Brexit transition period, their residence to an EU Member State is not such as to enable them to retain the status of EU citizen and the corresponding rights.
“This is an automatic consequence of the sole sovereign decision of the United Kingdom to withdraw from the Union”, the Court concluded in its judgment.
Read the judgment: https://aeur.eu/f/20j (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)