This book examines the electoral rights granted to those who do not have the nationality of the state in which they reside, within the European Union and its Member States. It looks at the rights of EU citizens to vote and stand in European Parliament elections and local elections wherever they live in the EU, and at cases where Member States of the Union also choose to grant electoral rights to other non-nationals from countries outside the EU. The EU's electoral rights are among the most important rights first granted to EU citizens by the EU Treaties in the 1990s. Putting these rights into their broader context, the book provides important insights into the development of the EU now that the Constitutional Treaty has been rejected in the referendums in France and the Netherlands, and into issues which are still sensitive for national sovereignty such as immigration, nationality and naturalization.

Salvesen Chair of European Institutions, School of Law, University of Edinburgh.

Part I. Electoral rights in legal and political context: 1. Introduction - Electoral rights and the boundaries of the suffrage; 2. Political membership in and beyond the state; 3. Electoral rights for non-nationals: theoretical, legal and political accounts; Part II. The Past, Present and Future of EU Electoral Rights: 4. The emerging constitutional framework for electoral rights in the era of European citizenship; 5. EU electoral rights since 1993; 6. Electoral Rights for Union Citizens: looking to the future; 7. Electoral rights for third country nationals: what role for the European Union?; Part III. The Contestation of Electoral Rights in the Member States of the European Union: 8. National politics of immigrant inclusion: the extension of electoral rights to resident non-nationals; 9. Electoral exclusion, models of citizenship and the contestation of belonging; 10. Out of empire: electoral rights, enlargement and the wider Europe; Part IV. Conclusions: 11. Conclusions - citizenship and electoral rights in the multi-level 'Euro-polity'.