Witte, Nils; Deutschmann, Emanuel (2024)
SocArXiv Papers
DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/6rxdp
Both freedom of movement and voting in European elections are fundamental cit-izenship rights at the heart of European integration. Ideally, EU citizens should be able to exercise both rights simultaneously. Yet, in practice, there is a tension be-tween the two: Despite their strong emotional attachment to the European Union, EU citizens residing outside their country of citizenship have a reduced likelihood to vote in European elections. This article demonstrates this pattern empirically for German emigrants in the 2019 European Parliament election, based on data from the German Emigration and Remigration Panel Study (GERPS). This survey is unique because it covers both mobile German citizens who currently live abroad and those who have lived abroad but have recently returned to Germany. Self-reported turnout was significantly reduced among those currently living abroad. Bureaucratic hurdles (including early opt-in registration deadlines and complex, non-standardized registration procedures) are identified as a key explanation for this reduced turnout. These findings seem to conflict with basic democratic prin-ciples and could have political implications: Since there are more than eleven mil-lion mobile EU citizens who are eligible to vote, the reduced probability to vote among mobile Europeans could affect election outcomes.