Study on Non- national EU Citizens’s Candidacies for Municipal Elections and on European Municipal Counsilors in France – ECREMEE

Although the Treaty of Maastricht confers political rights to European citizens who do not bear the nationality of the country in which they reside, very few of them make use of their electoral rights nowadays. Indeed, throughout Europe, only a minority of non-national European citizens vote or stand as candidates in municipal and European elections in their host country. In order to study those who stand for office in local elections, France constitutes a particularly interesting empirical case insofar as the French administration and statistical office provides detailed data that is largely unequalled in Europe. The number of candidates and European municipal councilors is also much higher in France than in the other countries due to the very large number of French municipalities (over 35,000), which make up nearly a third of EU municipalities.
Nevertheless, in the last municipal elections, non-French European citizens were five times less likely to be candidates than their French national counterparts were. The objective of this study is to examine the conditions for the achievement of this type of civic engagement among European citizens. The project examines in particular (1) the social and political factors explaining this specific form of civic engagement; (2) the different motivations for standing for office and (3) the socialization of elected representatives once in office. Four main methods will be carried out: a comparative statistical analysis of the sociological, demographic, and migratory characteristics of European candidates (n = 5,856) and European municipal councilors (n = 2,643) during the 2020 municipal elections; a questionnaire fielded to all serving European municipal councilors; interviews conducted with European candidates in 2020, elected and not-elected; (4) and finally, an ethnographic monitoring in certain municipalities as part of the campaign for the next municipal elections in 2026.