Transnational Europeans are those who have the citizenship of a country but who actually live in another country of Europe. It can be for instance an Erasmus student, an Italian, a Spanish or a French working in a bar in London, most of the construction workers, etc. Today, transnational Europeans are around 20 millions which corresponds to a bit less than 5% of the european population.

Transnational Europeans

Recently (the 8^th of May),  Alberto Alemanno an italian professor of law in Paris and currently living in Spain gave an interview to the french newspaper Libération. He precisely talks about the fact that, paradoxically, transnational Europeans are the most concerned by the european elections but also the most forgotten by the european politics. In fact, it is said in the article that only 5% of the Europeans living in another state are voting at the european elections.

Second order elections

This situation is mainly due to the fact that european elections are finally still focused on national topics and led by national parties. So it is hard to feel concerned by the political programs for those who belong to two or more countries.
Moreover,  it can become really complicated to vote when you don’t have the citizenship.
Estonia is the only European country in which you can vote through internet, in the rest of the countries you often have to get an ambassy card in order to vote and it takes a lot of time and energy to go to the ambassy and register.

Transnational vs. National

Alberto Alemanno considers that european elections should involve european parties only  defending european problematics. Today, the few parties implanted at an european scale are in realty more a federation of national parties than a proper european party.
The europeisation of the political processus is yet engaged with for instance the possibility of being candidate in another country than the one we are from but there are still a lot of things to do.
In fact, even though some events such as Brexit or the fight between Di Maio and Macron about the yellow jackets made the media talk about European Union, it is not the case anymore.
Concerning the next european elections, the main issue is maybe that there is no European leader but only national ones. Europe is more seen as a strategical point for a country to become more influent and defend its one interests than a sovranational place to promote european values.

Beyond boundaries

This case of transnational Europeans raise the problem of a lack of a true and deep political and cultural Europe. In fact, mental and political boundaries are still important between the countries inside Europe and being a transnational European is not so easy. Even if they must be the most aware about Europe troubles, there won’t be anyone to represent them until there is no europeisation of the european elections.

Ivana Lechaux