Member states have adopted a revised EU directive aimed at making it easier for citizens living in another member state to vote and stand as candidates in municipal elections, the Council of the European Union announced on May 26.
The new rules update a Council directive from 1994 and seek to address persistent barriers faced by so-called “mobile EU citizens” – those residing in an EU country other than the one of their nationality.
According to the Council, these citizens have often struggled to access clear information about how to vote, faced complex registration procedures or risked being automatically removed from the electoral rolls of their country of origin when registering abroad.
Under the revised directive, member states will be required to proactively inform mobile citizens about their electoral rights and registration conditions, including translations of key materials into languages widely understood across the bloc.
The text also introduces simplified and more uniform registration requirements to make procedures more accessible across member states, alongside safeguards against unintentional disenfranchisement when citizens register to vote in a host country.
The Council said the aim was to update rules considered obsolete and adapt them to the current realities of intra-EU mobility, almost three decades after the original directive entered into force.
On January 1, 2024, there were nearly 14 million mobile EU citizens, representing more than 4 per cent of the EU electorate, according to figures cited by the Council. Despite these numbers, turnout and the share of citizens standing as candidates in local elections have remained proportionally low.
The new municipal elections directive mirrors a similar revision adopted on June 24, 2025, which updated rules for mobile EU citizens voting in European Parliament elections. Both stem from a package of proposals first put forward by the European Commission on November 25, 2021, as part of a broader push by EC President Ursula von der Leyen’s team to reinforce democracy and electoral integrity in the bloc.
The legal basis for the measure is Article 22(1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which requires unanimity in the Council under a special legislative procedure and consultation with the European Parliament.
The European Commission has long argued that turnout among mobile citizens in local elections has remained low partly because of a lack of accessible information and uneven national procedures. Under the new directive, designated authorities in each member state will be tasked with providing relevant information both before and after a citizen registers to vote.
The legislative act will now be published in the Official Journal of the European Union and enter into force 20 days later. Member states will then have two years to transpose most of its provisions into their national legislation.
The municipal elections file had been approved by member states’ ambassadors in the Council’s Coreper II on May 20, paving the way for the formal adoption this week.
