French expats deprived of vote in EU poll 

Since 2003, it has not been possible to vote at embassies and consulates in the EU elections, as is normally the case for presidential elections or referenda.

Only French citizens registered to vote in their home country will be able to cast their ballot, either by proxy or by physically going to polling stations in France. 

Indeed, since French electoral districts were redrawn into eight different constituencies six years ago, French people living outside the EU have been denied the right to vote in their consulate or embassy.

534,716 electors residing outside the EU are registered on consular electoral lists, but 332,492 of them are not registered on electoral lists in France and only vote abroad, according to data released in July 2008 after a parliamentary report by Thierry Mariani (of the ruling UMP party) and Jean-Jacques Urvoas (Socialist). These French citizens are thus deprived of their right to vote in European elections. 

In January, Mariani and Urvoas submitted a legislative bill seeking to place French nationals living abroad in the French electoral district of Ile-de-France. This principle is applied, for example, in Poland where citizens established outside their country vote for the electoral district of Warsaw.

But the debate in the National Assembly, scheduled for 22 April, was postponed indefinitely. Citizens now must wait until the 2014 EU elections to be able to vote abroad, provided that the law is passed within the next five years.

"Even if adopted at the end of April, the law would have not been able to be put onto the Senate's agenda on time, but the vote would have been symbolic," Jean-Jacques Urvoas told EurActiv.

Thierry Mariani told EurActiv that the two MPs want to submit another legislative bill within the next three months. "We are going to propose that the two extra MEPs that France will receive following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty be reserved for French citizens living abroad," he explained.

Although the implementing measures are yet to be defined, Urvoas stressed that French citizens abroad would form a new electoral district, numerically as important as the others.

The two French MPs also hope that voting will take place online. "It is unthinkable that French citizens living in the United States could be forced to travel more than 3,000 kilometres to get to the closest consulate," remarked Mariani.