Roger Casale
31st August 2020Voters without Borders
Dear Supporter,
I am writing to update you after the summer break about our campaign to seek justice for the 1.7m voters who were denied a vote in the European elections in the UK in 2019.
The experience of mobile EU citizens in the UK and British citizens in Europe who were denied a vote represents once of the worst democratic outrages in the UK since the war and we do not intend to let it rest.
As MPs return to Westminster, we will be renewing our alliances with those who have supported our campaign throughout to press our demand for a full public inquiry into what happened.
The disenfranchisement of so many voters from the European Parliament elections in 2019, also points to weaknesses in the way in which elections are organised across Europe. There are lessons to be learned from the British experience.
Tomorrow, 1 September, we will be helping to launch a European Citizens Initiative called Voters Without Borders, from our headquarters at the Press Club, 95 Rue Froissart, Brussels.
If you are an EU citizen, you can sign the ECI from tomorrow, regardless of where you live. For UK supporters, please share the link with your EU citizen friends and colleagues and ask them to sign, too.
Voters Without Borders - ECI launch
The initiative is calling for full political rights for mobile EU citizens, including the right to vote in national elections and referendums.
Of 121 referendums held in the EU, 63 have been on changes to do with European matters and in none of them have mobile EU citizens - who are the most directly impacted by such changes - been entitled to vote.
The most striking example of this was of course the Brexit referendum in the UK from which EU citizens (and indeed most Britons abroad) were excluded.
We cannot reverse what happened with denied my vote, but we can learn from past mistakes so that such fundamental violations of democratic rights do not happen again elsewhere. We will be working closely with the new ECI Campaign to draw on the UK experience and make sure mobile EU citizens in the rest of Europe do have a voice and do have a vote.
Our EU-based work mirrors our campaign in the UK for EU citizens to be given full voting rights.
None of this work is possible without your ongoing support, for which we are hugely appreciative.
If you have not done so already, please consider joining New Europeans as a member:
We would also ask you to consider chipping in £5, £10, £25 or what you can afford to support our autumn campaign.
With thanks once again for all your support and every good wish.
Roger Casale
Secretary General and CEO, New Europeans