How can foreign EU-citizens vote in the European Parliament election in Hungary? / Participation in EU’s research suspended; the Swiss scholar community is shocked

How can foreign EU-citizens vote in the European Parliament election in Hungary?

 All EU citizens have the right to vote and to be elected as representatives in the European elections on May 25th, 2014, in whichever member state they happen to reside. Since every EU citizen has only one vote (and can be a candidate only in one member state) and can vote only in that country in which s/he is registered in the electoral roll, there is a little bit of paperwork required to clarify where exactly you will vote. This article aims to help non-Hungarian EU-citizen CEU students who want to vote in the European Parliament elections here in Hungary by clarifying the process.

  If you are officially residing in Hungary,  and have a Hungarian address card, you are eligible to register in the local Hungarian electoral roll.

There is the possibility to register online (https://kerelem.valasztas.hu/vareg/MagyarCimKerelemInditasa.xhtml), however most of the guidelines are written exclusively in Hungarian. Luckily, not being a Hungarian-speaker does not prevent you from fulfilling the process of online registration, because an American-German CEU alumnus was thoughtful enough to create a homepage for foreign EU citizens residing in Hungary for the sake of promoting participation in the European elections. I warmly suggest visiting the webpage set up by Johannes Wachs: http://voteinhungary.net/, which provides detailed, yet easy-to-follow, guidelines on online registration and issues related to participation in the European elections in Hungary. Moreover, he is happy to be contacted through this page, if further help is needed.

  The deadline for registration is 16 days before the election (i.e. May 9, 2014). Online registration takes only twenty minutes, however receiving confirmation (both via e-mail and regular mail) takes about three weeks.

Once you are registered, the voting authority (HVI) will keep you updated on information regarding where you can vote and the entire process. The place designated will be near your official address (displayed on your Hungarian address card), irrespective of where you may live in the city in May. You are eligible to participate in the local municipal elections of Budapest as well, if you will be residing here in October 2014.

  The CEU Weekly, after having found out that the page voteinhungary.net is edited by a CEU alumnus, contacted Johannes Wachs for a quick interview.

The CEU Weekly: When did you graduate from CEU?

Johannes Wachs: I graduated in 2012 with an MSc in Mathematics. I have been living in Budapest since the fall of 2009.

TCW: How did you get the idea to launch voteinhungary.net?

JW: I was not aware of my right to vote here until quite recently and I wanted to inform others. When I was registering I was quite surprised that everything was in Hungarian. I knew enough Hungarian to manage, but I feared that for many this would be an insurmountable obstacle. In any case, registration should be very easy. Building a simple guide was the clear solution.

TCW: Do you think young people are not active enough when it comes to the European elections?

JW: In the last European elections only around 5,000 non-citizen residents registered to vote in Hungary out of a population of over 100,000. There is probably room for improvement among all age groups and demographics. That said, I think the poor turnout of young voters is worth special attention.         I worry that issues relevant to young people are being marginalized because so many of us stay at home (but this applies to most elections these days). This constituency, of which I am a part, namely young people living outside of their home country, is obviously greatly affected by policies decided at the European level. On a personal level, I believe that the European Union should be more than just a collection of countries with independent interests. Exercising your voting rights in another European country is a small step towards this ideal.

Agnes Kelemen,

Hungary,

Nationalism Studies

More information: http://voteinhungary.net/ 

MPhotos: http://www.elections2014.eu/, http://www.internationalrivers.org/

Participation in EU’s research suspended; the Swiss scholar community is shocked

The Swiss vote on the 9^th of February 2014 to introduce an emigration quota for EU citizens, as well as to suspend the expansion of freedom of movement from Croatia turned out to have unexpected consequences for Swiss-EU relations. The European Commission has suspended the Swiss participation in EU exchange programs such as “Horizon 2020” and “Erasmus”. Moreover, the EU has already put on hold further agreements concerning cross-border electricity threatening review of existing treaties with Switzerland.

Swiss relations with the EU, without going into details, can be described as bilateral negotiations by package, where both counterparts negotiate each topic separately, such as education programs or the free movement of goods. While Switzerland is not the member of EU, it is closely integrated with the Union and is a member of the Schengen zone. However, Switzerland does not automatically apply changes in the Schengen regime regarding new members of the EU; such as in the case of Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. Romanian and Bulgarian citizens are faced with “restricted access to the Swiss labor market and are subject to special quotas”, until 2016 at least.

Until now, this particular way of negotiating, excluding or including particular changes, was quite successful for Switzerland; as restricted access to the Swiss labor market for nationals of new EU member states was implemented without sanction from the EU itself. This time though, the EU reacted quite promptly by freezing immediately the participation of Switzerland in the research programs mentioned, reiterating that “the free movement of labor is one of the EU’s fundamental principles.” “We should stay level-headed” said Martin Schulz, the President of European Parliament, “but one thing is clear: you can’t take advantage of a big European internal market and stay outside in other questions at the same time”.

The Swiss government, who have up to three years to translate this vote into law, are caught in a tricky trap: on the one hand, the vote reflects the growing concern of the Swiss population about issues of immigration, state security and a potential growth in immigrant crime. On the other hand, it is necessary to avoid antagonism with the EU, the Swiss’ biggest trading partner, as well as influent neighbors Germany and France. Another question that has been raised is the Swiss system of direct democracy. Referendums, the “sacred cow” which allows space for reflection of popular dissatisfaction, but also the possibility to bring any subject to referendum. The Swiss population constantly votes for issues related to Switzerland’s EU relations.

Both programs, Erasmus and Horizon 2020, suspended by the EU, would cover funding from 2014 to 2020 and allow Swiss students and researchers to participate in world-class science projects. Last year, Swiss researchers received 1.8 billion Euro of EU funding for research in areas such as information technology, health and nanoscience. The question of financing is very important. Only in 2013, the University of Geneva received 25 million Swiss francs from the EU. Geneva Universities send and receive approximately 300 students per year; towards which the EU finances from 300,000 to 500,000 francs a year. There are alternative such as the Coimbra exchange network, but this covers only 18.7 % of all exchanges. Moreover, it is necessary to renegotiate with each University now, while the Erasmus program facilitated exchanges within the same framework under the same, standardized conditions.

Another significant European research program, Horizon 2020, has a budget of 80 billion Euro. Participating in this program allow the creation of 8,000 jobs, almost 10% of which are in Geneva. Yves Flückiger, the Vice-Rector of University of Geneva, points out that the researchers of the University of Geneva participated in nearly 250 projects facilitated through EU programs, which reported 160 million francs to the University. Moreover, the University of Geneva is one of the most international Universities in Europe, with more than 40% non-Swiss teachers and students working and studying there. Thus Switzerland’s exclusion from these EU programs may also impact Swiss Universities’ international rankings, which are in large part affected by international scholars and exchange programs.

The whole Swiss scholarly and University community is shocked and angry. “So, let’s split”, claims Nicolas Levrat, the Director of Global studies at the University of Geneva, “why should we accept the consequences of a vote by a part of Swiss population?” Geneva students organized demonstrations, as well as a culinary event to denounce the results of the vote. The latter involved a table separated by wire: in order to access the meal on the table, students had to “break the wired symbolic border”. Students explained, “Our table is the opposition between the open Switzerland today and our future with borders”. Universities, EPF, Hautes écoles suisses, Academies, as well as the National Research Fund, released an open letter to the Federal Council asking to take “all possible measures” to ensure that Switzerland takes part in the Erasmus and Horizon 2020 programs.

Nataliya Borys, History, Ukraine

Photos: Tribune de Genève