LUXEMBOURG (CN) — British citizens living in the European Union do not get to keep their right to vote in local elections after the United Kingdom left the bloc, the EU’s highest court held Thursday.
The European Court of Justice ruled that a British woman who has been living in France for more than three decades no longer has the right to vote in municipal elections there, despite also not being allowed to vote in the United Kingdom. The decision is seen as a test case for the legal rights of the some 1 million Britons who were living in the EU before the British exit, or Brexit.
The Luxembourg-based court minced no words on who was to blame for the woman’s loss of her right to vote. It is “the automatic result of a sovereign decision made by a former Member State … to withdraw from the European Union,” the ruling states.
In 2020, E.P., as she is called in court documents, attempted to reregister for the electoral roll as a non-French citizen. The British woman, who first moved to France in 1984 and is married to a French citizen, was removed from the list of voters following the U.K.’s departure from the European Union. The Commune of Thoux, a rural region in southern France, rejected her application, citing Brexit.
E.P. appealed, arguing that since she had been living outside of the U.K. for more than 15 years, she no longer had the right to vote there and the decision in France left her without any ability to participate in democracy. Under the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, EU nationals were given the reciprocal right to vote in local and municipal elections.
The Court of Justice ruled that, following Brexit, British nationals no longer have any status as a citizen in the EU, and in particular they can no longer vote in local elections or stand for political office, another benefit conveyed by the Maastrict Treaty.
“The loss of nationality of a Member State therefore entails, for the person concerned, the automatic loss of his or her status as a citizen of the Union,” the Grand Chamber wrote.
Brexit, which was finalized on Feb. 1, 2020, arose from a 2016 referendum in which 51.9% of the country voted to leave the EU. A lengthy withdrawal process to disentangle the country from the political and economic union followed, resulting in numerous court cases.
The EU’s high court has continued to hear cases launched by or against the U.K. before Brexit was finalized and to adjudicate issues stemming from the withdrawal agreement. Last year, for example, it found that Ireland did not need to directly accept the EU’s post-Brexit extradition treaty in order to let the U.K. take custody of a pair of wanted fugitives.
In 2021, the EU launched legal action against London for delayed customs checks on goods being shipped into Northern Ireland. Though a part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland shares a land border with Ireland, which is an EU member state. A 1998 agreement called the Good Friday Agreement, which sought to end political violence in Northern Ireland, requires that the border remain open.
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