A letter popped onto my doormat two days ago informing me that I was registered to vote in Sweden in European Parliament elections on June 7th. It also said that I could cancel my registration in Sweden if I wanted to vote in the UK, my home country.
That got me thinking – where should I cast my vote, and what difference will it really make?
The EU might seem pretty remote to many of its inhabitants, but like it or not, it is actually pretty powerful. The Parliament itself has gone from being a talking shop to wielding real influence.
85 percent of new laws may have their origins in Brussels, according to some estimates (although this rather depends on how you count). Despite this, participation in the last European elections was a pitiful 38 percent in Sweden (or about 2.7 million people), and 45 percent in the EU as a whole. There’s no doubt that the fiendish complexity of European politics is partly to blame for this, as is the media’s poor coverage of happenings in Brussels and Strasbourg.
This might be a sorry state of affairs for democracy, but it’s a big opportunity for those of us from other EU countries living in Sweden to make our voices heard.
The Swedish electoral authority, Valmyndigheten, says that 219,000 foreign EU citizens of voting age are resident in Sweden. If all those people used their right to vote (and if overall electoral participation stayed the same), non-Swedish citizens would make 8 percent of the number of people voting. That’s a pretty chunky voting block, which could be pretty powerful if foreigners also used their right to express a preference for an individual candidate (as only 59 percent of people did at the last election).
As things stand, though, only 37,000 of those 219,000 have registered their right to vote in Sweden.
It sometimes feels like moving abroad is to condemn oneself to a lifetime of powerless whingeing. But if you happen to be a citizen of another European country this does not have to be the case, but only if you use your vote – and use it in Sweden.
