When Should EU Migrants Be Granted Access to Political Rights?

In this article, I argue that EU migrants should be given immediate access to political rights in both local and general elections in the member-state they live in for both principled and practical reasons. Access to such rights, I will argue, does not require EU’s transformation into a federal constitutional order. It also implies immediate access to social rights as well. The argument proceeds in the following steps. Section II provides an overview of recent literature on EU citizens’ access to political rights and assesses the argument that granting such rights in local elections could be easily detached from granting similar rights in general elections. Section III provides three arguments as to why the exercise of political rights by EU citizens, in both local and general elections, does not necessitate the acquisition of national citizenship in the host member-state. Section IV shows why granting EU citizens immediate access to such transnational political rights necessarily entails granting them also access to transnational social rights and argues that such immediate access, to both political and social rights, is compatible with the current constitutional order of the EU as an international, rather than transnational, institution. This section also supports the claim that combined access to political and social rights provides EU citizens with a robust form of protection from risks associated with political domination due to nationals’ exclusive access to political rights. Section V examines a number of objections, while section VI concludes.