Head to head
36
NOVEMBER 2021
Foreigner voting rights The government plans to abolish a five-year residency requirement for foreigners to vote in local elections.
Sérgio Ferreira is the spokesperson for foreign workers’ rights group Asti
Why do you think the government has decided to abolish the five-year residency requirement now? FRED KEUP Why now? Why at all? I think some parties expect to benefit compared to others in the local elections. SÉRGIO FERREIRA This should have happened a lot earlier. We’re the only country in the European Union that has this clause. It’s the end of discrimination of EU voters. FK But we extended the right to vote in local elections to all foreign ers, not just EU citizens. This goes further than most EU countries. We have a longer waiting period, but all for eigners can vote. A lot in Luxembourg boils down to languages. What challenges does it pose if people who haven’t been in the country that long can vote? FK This is a big challenge for all par ties, even those who support the meas ure. We’re working on flyers for some communes and they’re in four languages. One of the big disadvantages of diversity is that we don’t have a common language.
“ More democracy benefits everyone”
SF You can’t deny it’s a challenge for parties, also financially. But there are more solutions today, too. We have dig ital tools. And there is more information available to voters, too. There are Portu guese and English media. Our multilin gualism is a challenge, and there must be more investment in language policy, to promote the Luxembourg language and the other administrative languages. FK We can agree on this. There must be more investment in languages. Luxembour gish has disappeared from many places. And this is happening in local politics, too. It’s a problem when there are people on municipal councils or colleges of alder men who don’t speak Luxembourgish. SF The skills of a councillor don’t depend on language. It’s a good thing that peo ple get invested in politics, even if they don’t speak the language that well. Our democracy needs people who are com mitted. Everyone should have the oppor tunity to participate. FK No. Luxembourgish was always spo ken on the councils. It’s our national lan guage. Of course, it’s about skills, but it’s also about language skills. People who speak Luxembourgish usually also speak at least some French and German. This is important to connect with the people working and living in the commune.
In the 2017 municipal elections, fewer than 25% of foreigners took part. Is the residence clause really the biggest obstacle? SF It’s one of the reasons. But we also cannot think that this will be the pana cea to get a larger proportion of foreign ers to register to vote. FK You need a period of integration, in terms of languages but also the politi cal landscape. It makes sense to keep a certain period of waiting to vote. It’s currently five years. We could have imagined lowering it to three under the condition that it’s connected to other