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Luxembourg: The 2015 Referendum on Voting Rights for Foreign Residents

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The Palgrave Handbook of European Referendums

Abstract

On 7 June 2015, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg held a consultative referendum on extending voting rights to non-citizen residents (the so-called Auslännerwahlrecht). In a country otherwise known for its stability, the referendum result resembled a political earthquake as nearly 80 per cent of the Luxembourgish electorate said ‘No’ to enfranchising non-citizens. This chapter discusses the reasons behind the referendum and analyses the campaigns leading up to the vote. The conclusion reflects on the wider implications of the referendum. We argue that the referendum proved divisive in the sense that it stirred up nationalist sentiments and ultimately failed to resolve the lingering democratic deficit it was meant to address.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the aftermath of the 2004 general election, the incoming government announced its ambition to revise the Constitution. In April 2009, the revision proposal N°6030 to amend and redraft the Constitution was introduced in Parliament (Chambre des Députés du Gouvernement du Luxembourg 2009).

  2. 2.

    A fourth question on the State’s obligations to provide salaries and pensions for priests was announced but eventually abandoned following an agreement between the government and religious representatives in January 2015.

  3. 3.

    There are some exceptions where foreign residents can acquire voting rights, including New Zealand and some South American countries (e.g. Chile and Uruguay).

  4. 4.

    Where appropriate, quotations have been translated by the authors.

  5. 5.

    In recent years, the country has witnessed several consultative referendums at the local level, notably asking residents to decide whether their communes should merge into one.

  6. 6.

    The 2005 referendum result was surprisingly close for a country that is generally very Europhile: only 56.52% of the voters were in favour of the ratification of the European Union Constitutional Treaty (see Blau 2005: 95ff).

  7. 7.

    The extent to which referendums in Luxembourg are legally binding is actually subject to debate (see Heuschling 2015).

  8. 8.

    Luxembourgish citizens living abroad can register by applying for a postal vote.

  9. 9.

    In case of an unjustified abstention, sanctions can include penalties ranging from €100 to €1000.

  10. 10.

    Parliamentary document N°6738 (see Chambre des Députés du Gouvernement du Luxembourg 2014).

  11. 11.

    In 1994, in the context of the negotiations on the European directives outlining the procedures for the local and European voting rights, Luxembourg obtained a derogation; since more than 20% of the population was composed of non-citizens, the country was allowed to implement additional restrictions (i.e. a longer residence requirement). However, these additional restrictions were eased gradually (Fetzer 2011: 98). The required period of residence to be able to participate in European elections was initially set at ten years, but then lowered to five years for the 2004 elections and two years for the 2009 elections. Since 2014, EU citizens no longer have to prove any duration of residency to participate in European elections (CEFIS 2014).

  12. 12.

    The term Awunnerwahlrecht translates into ‘resident voting rights’ and was used by proponents of enfranchising non-citizens. In comparison to Auslännerwahlrecht (‘foreigner voting rights’), the term Awunnerwahrecht is considered more inclusive (see also Petry 2016: 86–87).

  13. 13.

    In 2017, cross-border workers made up 45% of the salaried workforce in Luxembourg (ADEM 2018: 6).

  14. 14.

    In April 2020. Mediahuis NV acquired the media group Saint-Paul Luxembourg S.A., leaving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Luxembourg with a minority stake in Mediahuis (Mediahuis 2020).

  15. 15.

    This is not to say that the coverage in the Luxemburger Wort on the referendum was one-sided; the newspaper also published several columns and letters by people who were opposed to the initiative.

  16. 16.

    While the Woxx grew out of the Green movement in the 1980s, the newspaper has since gained independence (see Graf 2014).

  17. 17.

    Besides the six parties in parliament, there were also three smaller political parties active at the time: (1) the Pirate Party, which was in favour of the Auslännerwahlrecht; (2) the Communist Party (KPL), which was opposed; and (3) the Party for Integral Democracy (PID), which did not take an official stance (see Petry 2016: 58–62).

  18. 18.

    To this end, the CSV introduced its own proposal for a reform of the Nationality Law on 24 February 2015 (Parliamentary document N°6781), i.e. several months before the official campaign (see Chambre des Députés du Gouvernement du Luxembourg 2015b).

  19. 19.

    This claim is likely to be exaggerated; according to a report published by Luxembourg’s official statistics agency (STATEC), as of January 2015, a maximum of 105,000 foreign residents (compared to 245,092 nationals) could participate in legislative elections—provided they would all sign up for local elections first (Allegrezza et al. 2015). If foreign residents (who fulfil both prerequisites) had been able to participate in the next legislative election, they would have represented 27.6% of the votes at most.

  20. 20.

    While the work on the new Constitution was finalised in June 2018, it will be up to the newly elected ‘Chamber of Deputies’ to decide when to proceed. The new Constitution must be first approved by the Parliament and the second vote should be replaced by a national referendum (Chambre des Députés du Grand-Duché du Luxembourg 2018).

  21. 21.

    In the end, six members of the Wee2050 movement stood as candidates in the 2018 general elections; however, none of them made it into the Chamber of Deputies (Luxemburger Wort 2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Léonie de Jonge

  2. University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

    Ralph Petry

Authors
  1. Léonie de Jonge
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  2. Ralph Petry
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Correspondence to Léonie de Jonge .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Julie Smith

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de Jonge, L., Petry, R. (2021). Luxembourg: The 2015 Referendum on Voting Rights for Foreign Residents. In: Smith, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of European Referendums . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55803-1_18

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