Luxembourg, 12/09/2006 (Agence Europe) - On the same day, the Court of Justice issued two judgements in cases on the right of inhabitants of Gibraltar and Aruba (a Dutch overseas territorty) to vote and stand in European elections. The EC Treaty does not oppose the idea of Member States giving voting rights and the right to stand in European elections to people with close links with the country in question, in addition to its own citizens and citizens of other EU Member States residing in that country, explains the Court in a press release. But it does have to follow EU law in this connection. The EC Treaty and the 1976 Act on universal suffrage for representatives of the European Parliament (last amended in 2002) do not give any explicit or detailed definition of who can benefit from the right to vote or stand for the EP, so given the current EU legal situation, it is for each Member States to decide who may vote and stand for election for the European Parliament.
In the Gibraltar case, Spain was planning to take the UK to court because it argued that including Gibraltar in an electoral constuency that already existed in England violated Annex 1 of the 1976 Act and the 2002 declaration by the UK government about elections in Gibraltar. The Court said that including Gibraltar in an existing constituency in the UK put Gibraltar voters in a similar situation to UK voters, who should not have to face problems connected with the status of the peninsula of Gibraltar which might prevent them from exercising their right to vote or dissuade them from doing so. It also pointed out that it the UK adopted the legislation challenged by Spain in order to meet the requirements of a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (the 1999 Mathews ruling). Because of its constitutional traditions, the UK decided to give voting rights and the right to stand in elections to Qualifying Commonwealth Citizen s (QCC). To enable Gibraltar inhabitants to take part in European elections, the UK created a new constituency in 2003, which added Gibraltar to a constituency in the UK, creating at the same time a special electoral role for QCCs.
In the Dutch case (Aruba), the Eman and Sevinger ruling, the Dutch authorities did not give the residents of Aruba, who do not reside in the Netherlands, the right to vote. The Court of Justice notes that the residence criterion appears to have bee wrongly used to determine who can benefit from the right to vote and stand in European elections, explaining that in terms of the principle of equal treatment, the relevant factors for comparison are a Dutch person residing in the Dutch Antilles or in Aruba and a Dutch person residing in a third country. What they all have in common is being Dutch but not residing in ther Netherlands, but there is different treatment because Dutch people abroad have the right to vote. This difference in treatment has to be objectively justified, it notes. It concludes that the Dutch government has not sufficiently demonstrated that the difference in treatment between Dutch people living abroad and Dutch people living in the Dutch An tilles or Aruba can be objectively justified and does not constitute a violation of the principle of equal treatment. The Dutch Council of State sent the case to the Court of Justice. If it were to determine that the two inhabitants of Aruba had been wrongfully excluded from the electoral register for the European elections of 10 June 2004, they will be entitled to compensation from the Netherlands, explains the Court in a press release. (See EUROPE 8791 on the Court's refusal to deal with this case using the accelerated proceedings on the grounds of urgency, as requested by the Dutch Council of State.)