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RSCAS 2020/07 Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies The European Governance and Politics Programme spaceu2019 final report Lorenzo Cicchi European University Institute Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies The European Governance and Politics Programme Spaceu2019 final report Lorenzo Cicchi EUI Working Paper RSCAS 2020/07 This text may be downloaded only for personal research purposes. Additional reproduction for other purposes, whether in hard copies or electronically, requires the consent of the author(s), editor(s). If cited or quoted, reference should be made to the full name of the author(s), editor(s), the title, the working paper, or other series, the year and the publisher. ISSN 1028-3625 © Lorenzo Cicchi, 2020 Printed in Italy, January 2020 European University Institute Badia Fiesolana I – 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) Italy www.eui.eu/RSCAS/Publications/ www.eui.eu cadmus.eui.eu Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, created in 1992 and currently directed by Professor Brigid Laffan, aims to develop inter-disciplinary and comparative research on the major issues facing the process of European integration, European societies and Europe’s place in 21st century global politics. The Centre is home to a large post-doctoral programme and hosts major research programmes, projects and data sets, in addition to a range of working groups and ad hoc initiatives. The research agenda is organised around a set of core themes and is continuously evolving, reflecting the changing agenda of European integration, the expanding membership of the European Union, developments in Europe’s neighbourhood and the wider world. For more information: http://eui.eu/rscas The EUI and the RSCAS are not responsible for the opinion expressed by the author(s). The European Governance and Politics Programme The European Governance and Politics Programme (EGPP) is an international hub of high quality research and reflection on Europe and the European Union. Launched in 2018, it is part of the research programmes of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. The EGPP maintains its core activities through externally funded research projects, including financial support from the European Commission through the European Union budget, and is animated by the Programme Associates, leading scholars from different disciplines brought together by their interest in European integration and its future development. For more information: http://europeangovernanceandpolitics.eui.eu/ Abstract In occasion of the European Parliament elections of 2019, the EUI in partnership with StatLab launched project Spaceu2019, a two-fold online tool specifically tailored for mobile EU citizens voting either in their country of citizenship or residence. The University of Luzern in Switzerland contributed to the tool implementation. The first pillar consists of an interactive database, informing users on their electoral rights and allowing them to compare the conditions and requirements for participating in the political process of their country of residence or citizenship. The second pillar is euandi2019, a Voting Advice Application (VAA) helping citizen find the political party that best matches their policy preferences. The main objective was to create a more aware European-wide, politically active citizenry, therefore making the EP elections more relevant and transnational. This also may have helped getting citizens out to vote, given that EP elections are traditionally prone to particularly low levels of turnout. The main target group were EU mobile citizens as well as those with a dual citizenship, but also European citizens at large as this device is open to all and gives useful information on how to vote, and which parties are the best match, to static citizens as well. The project received funding by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020), Grant Agreement number 785683. None of this funding was transferred to Switzerland. The University of Luzern instead contributed through the Swiss National Science Foundation grant for project “Towards transnational voting in/for Europe”. This report provides information on the implementation and usage figures for both online tools. Keywords European elections, party placement, Voting Advice Applications, electoral rights, EU mobile citizens. General framework* In recent years, the number of EU mobile citizens (i.e. EU citizens resident in a Member State different than their own) is growing. EU mobile citizens have been granted the right to vote (as well as that of standing as candidates in EP elections) in the host Member State under the same conditions as that State’s nationals, as stated in Article 22 TFEU, Article 39 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Directive 93/109/EC(42). However, their political participation is generally low. Potential factors are 1. Access to participation in the host country and factors limiting it (legal framework, voting infrastructure); 2. Knowledge about the rights and opportunities to participate; 3. Level of political engagement; 4. Availability of politically suitable options. Project Spaceu2019, implemented by the European University Institute1 in collaboration with StatLab, specifically helps European citizens in regards of these factors. It is composed by two pillars: 1. An interactive database, informing users on their electoral rights and allowing them to compare the conditions and requirements for participating in the political process of their country of residence vs. citizenship (tackling factors 1 and 2, and as a by-product factor 3); 2. An online Voting Advice Application (VAA), that allows users to match their policy preferences with the positions of the political parties running for EP elections in all 27 Member States, focusing on the electoral contexts in which voters exercise their voting rights (tackling factor 4, and as a by-product factor 3). The first pillar was launched online in February 20192 and is still available at the address www.spaceu2019.eui.eu. By late March, all translations were completed and the dissemination strategy commenced. The second pillar, instead, was implemented as a stand-alone website launched in late April 2019 and still available at the address www.euandi2019.eui.eu . This decision was taken in order to order to maximize the impact of the tool: already in 2014 the EUI had launched a EU-wide VAA called euandi (read: “EU and I”), and the name continuity was deemed to be an important branding factor not to be lost by merging the VAA within the – at that time – already existing interactive electoral rights database. Multiple cross-linking logos (see figures in next sections) were deployed in both websites in order to ensure mutual re-directions from one pillar to the other. Both websites were completely multi-lingual, with all pages and sub-pages available in EU’s 23 official languages3. The astonishing number of around 1.3 million users were reached, however with an extremely skewed distribution towards the second pillar. On overall it is safe to say that these figures can be viewed as a definitive success of the entire project. * ‘The project Spaceu2019 was funded by the European Union’s Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme (2014-2020), G.A no. 785683. The content of report represents the views of the author only and is his/her sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains. 1 The University of Luzern also contributed to the tool implementation, through the Swiss National Science Foundation grant for project “Towards transnational voting in/for Europe”. 2 According to the EC Action Grant, both tools should have been launched simultaneously in March 2019. However, the party positioning were not available until later in the electoral campaign, so the launch of the VAA was postponed to April; conversely, the electoral law provisions of certain countries that required EU mobile citizens to register, in order to cast their vote in the country of residence, earlier than March, pushed the project scientific leadership to anticipate this date; therefore, the electoral database was already launched online in February. 3 Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish. 1 Lorenzo Cicchi Spaceu2019 Spaceu2019 consisted, as explained, of an interactive dataset of electoral rights for the EP elections 2019 specifically tailored at EU mobile citizens and available in all 23 EU official languages. Upon entering the homepage, users were asked to select their country of citizenship and residence (figure 1). Figure 1. Spaceu2019 country selection page After having selected the countries, users were redirected to a page presenting detailed information on how to cast their vote in both countries. This information is available in English and in all official languages of the selected country of citizenship; therefore, for instance, a German citizen could visualize how to vote in Germany or in any other country in both English and German. This takes into account also for those countries with multiple official languages4. Figure 2 below shows the visualization output for one case of such multi-lingual countries. All pages featured a link to the second pillar of the project,
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