Changes to European Union Citizens eligibility to vote and candidacy rights
EU citizens are no longer automatically entitled to register to vote or stand for election.
Background
Two groups of EU citizens will retain their voting rights:
- 'Qualifying EU citizens' - citizens of EU countries which the UK has bilateral Voting and Candidacy Rights (VCR) treaties with. These are (as at May 2025):
- Denmark
- Luxembourg
- Poland
- Portugal
- Spain
- 'EU citizens with retained rights' - citizens from any other EU country who have been legally resident in the UK since before the UK left the EU on 31 December 2020.
Citizens from Ireland, Malta, or Cyprus are unaffected by these changes and will retain their voting rights in all UK elections while they remain a resident in the UK.
EU citizens elected before 7 May 2024 can remain in office for the remainder of their term.
More information, including a tool EU citizens can use to find out which elections they can vote in, can be found on the Electoral Commission website.
Eligibility confirmation process
We wrote to all EU citizens currently registered on the Electoral Register in November 2024 to either:
- confirm that they are being retained on the register following a data-based review as being a qualifying EU citizen or having retained rights; or
- ask EU citizens to confirm if they remain eligible to be registered under the new criteria. Depending upon the response the elector either remained on the register or were removed. Anyone who did not respond has been removed from the Electoral Register.
If you have gained new citizenship or changed your nationality
If you have gained new citizenship or changed your nationality since you last registered to vote, re-register to vote at https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote.
Changes to your citizenship or nationality may affect your eligibility to vote in some elections. If you have any queries or unable to get online, please contact the Electoral Services team.
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