Electoral participation of third-country nationals. National policy brief - LATVIA

The National policy brief is prepared in the framework of o project „Fostering political participation and policy involvement of migrants in 9 Central and Eastern EU countries” (Agreement No. HOME/2013/EIFX/CA/ CFP/4234) supported by the European Commission's Fund fo the Integration of Third Country Nationals. The project is co-funded by the European Union.

Goal

Promote political participation, which is based on the principle of equal opportunities, of the permanently staying third country nationals, including non-citizens, through initiating discussion on electoral rights and facilitating the naturalisation process.

Introduction

As to January 2014, 83.62% of the Latvia’s population were citizens of Latvia, 12.97% were Latvian non-citizens, and the remaining 3.41% were foreigners, including third country nationals.[1] There were 48 137 foreigners with permanent residence permits, and 23 857 with temporary ones.[2] In the beginning of 2014, there were still 9,000 non-citizens’ children, whose parents have not taken the advantage of the opportunity to register them as Latvian citizens.[3]

The right to take part in the parliamentary elections and referendums is reserved only for Latvian citizens.[4] Legislation in force grants the Latvian citizens and the citizens of other EU Member States the right to vote and stand for municipal and European Parliament elections in Latvia.[5] Non-citizens and other third-country nationals do not have any right to vote and to stand for election. However, non-citizens, along with the Latvian citizens and the citizens of other EU member states, can be members of political parties with limitation that if the total number of party members exceeds 400, at least half of them should be Latvian citizens.[6]

MIPEX

According to a research conducted at European level, MIPEX, Latvia’s immigrant integration policy has been marked as less favourable among 31 European and North American countries, which were covered by the research. According to the latest Migrant Integration Policy Index (2011), Latvia has projects but no comprehensive policy for migrant integration and “by keeping foreigners outside democratic life, Latvia has not addressed the need to build public trust”.[7] It is noted that not all residents in Latvia have equal political liberties and they face restrictions on political associations and parties.

Political discussion and public discourse in EU and Latvia

The issue of electoral rights of third-country nationals has been increasingly debated in Europe. Although the opportunities and restrictions with regard to electoral rights differ a lot among the states, some or all categories third-country nationals have the right to vote in local election in 16 EU member states; candidacy rights are in 10 EU member states.[8] Democracy and integration arguments to the large extent have facilitated the legislative changes in many European states.

The Latvian government is concerned that granting electoral rights to non-citizens would undermine the integration policy aiming at facilitating the naturalisation process.[9] At the same time, representatives of international organisations, above all, the Council of Europe, and the EU institutions believe that the non-citizens’ voting rights at local level would facilitate integration, strengthen democracy and encourage their participation in Latvia’s social and political life.[10] The parliamentary opposition has several times proposed the legislative amendments, which would allow non-citizens to vote in municipal elections. According to some surveys, the population at large has not so clearly opposed to such rights (the opponents are than a half of the total respondents Latvian citizens).[11] However, the electoral rights of non-citizens and other third country nationals have not been publicly discussed in Latvia.

Recommendations the government, municipalities, political parties and NGOs:

• Initiate public debate on granting electoral rights to permanently staying third-country nationals, including non-citizens) at local level
• Learn good practices and benefits of immigrants’ political participation, including electoral rights
• Raise awareness on the benefits of being a Latvian citizens, particularly among non-citizens parents and their children
• Promote Latvian language training for non-citizens to facilitate naturalisation and political participation
• Political parties should create a dialog with non-citizens and foreigners

Raise awareness among foreigners on social and political processes in Latvia; conduct training for leaders of immigrant associations on pol

Published: 2014-07-16