The Catalunya Europa Foundation and the Horizonte Europa Association organised on Friday 26 May a new session of the cycle of online debates Café Europa to discuss the right to vote in the European Union.

With the municipal elections approaching on Sunday, 28 May, it is opportune to ask why many citizens still cannot exercise their right to vote to elect their local representatives. Or they may not appear on any electoral list to be elected mayor/sa and councilman/a.

The municipal elections reopen the debate on discrimination on the grounds of origin of our new neighbors who are excluded from political participation despite living and working for years among us.

In this session, we spoke with three speakers:

• Viviane Ogou, researcher on EU-Africa relations and founder of the Gateway to Africa partnership.
• Hamza Ali Rajà, political scientist, intercultural mediator and interpreter.
• Mariela Sandres, pedagogue expert in human rights and violence prevention.

At this meeting, we raised the issue of guaranteeing the right to vote of migrants within the European Union, a situation of discrimination that violates the civil and political rights enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966.

According to the population register, the foreign population resident in Catalonia currently exceeds one million two hundred thousand people (16.3% of the population), but in the 28M elections only one third were able to vote, citizens of EU Member States and those from 13 countries with reciprocity agreements with the Spanish State, but none of them will be able to vote in general or regional elections. If the right to vote is an essential part of a democratic society, why can some citizens vote and not high? Why is the right to choose and be elected linked to nationality and not to citizenship or where we live?

The session was presented by Albert Royo, president of Horizon Europe, and moderated by Dolors Camats, director of the Catalunya Europa Foundation, who addressed questions from attendees at the end of the session.

The cycle of online debates Café Europa takes place on the last Friday of each month, with an informative character on issues of European or international scope.