Differences in EU citizen voter registration: Evidence from French local elections

The 1992 Maastricht Treaty guarantees European Union citizens the right to vote in local and European elections held in their country of residence. Yet, few mobile European Union citizens actually exercise this right. In France, which hosts the second-largest number of EU immigrants, only 26.2% of this population were registered to vote for the 2020 local elections. This article uses traditional explanations of immigrant electoral participation to understand the low electoral participation of foreign EU citizens. We combine census, electoral and local data to examine the determinants of registration rates for the nine largest EU nationalities in France. Our findings suggest that existing theories of resistance, transferability and exposure account for differences in electoral registration, while also suggesting that municipality size is an important factor.