The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe Demands Greater Participation of Foreigners in National Politics

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Recommendations of the Parliamentary Assembly

The Committee on Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation (the AS/Mig Committee) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) unanimously adopted a report titled “The role of diasporas and migrants in developing social cohesion and democratic engagement.” The document’s rapporteur is British parliamentarian Leslie Griffiths, who sits in the House of Lords on behalf of the Labour Party. The report’s most controversial provision is its call for states to explore the possibility of allowing non-citizen immigrants to vote in general elections.

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is not, in the classic sense, a legislative body, and its resolutions are not binding on member states. It nevertheless performs a significant opinion-shaping function, and the documents it adopts often become a point of reference for subsequent legislative initiatives at the national and EU levels, setting the direction for further action in this area. For this reason, given the theses it contains, the report warrants a more detailed discussion.

Diaspora as a broadly understood concept

The substantive part of the report opens with a draft resolution of thirteen points, adopted unanimously by the Committee. It is this text that contains the actual policy recommendations addressed to member states, while the more extensive explanatory memorandum that follows provides the substantive justification, examples of national practices, and references to earlier Council of Europe documents.

It is worth noting that, in the memorandum setting out the justification for the draft, the term “diaspora” is defined broadly, as a group of people originating from the same country, residing in a third country and maintaining strong cultural, linguistic, family, economic, and social links with their country of origin. It is also worth noting that the document states that the word “originating” is to be understood broadly. It also covers persons already born in the host country and holding its citizenship, whose roots reach back to the country of origin even several generations earlier (point 13 of the explanatory memorandum).

Integration as a two-way obligation

Point 6 of the draft resolution defines integration as a “reciprocal and structural” process, requiring openness and active participation from both the diasporas themselves and the local communities already residing in a given state. This framing shifts part of the responsibility for the success of integration onto the host society, moving away from the traditional understanding of the process as the migrant’s one-sided adaptation to existing norms and institutions.

Further in the document, PACE calls on member states not only to consult diaspora groups systematically when designing programs and policies concerning them, but also to ensure that their contributions are “not only heard, but acted upon” (point 9). It is worth noting that, although the cited phrase remains legally non-binding, it suggests an expectation of a practical effect going beyond ordinary public consultation, bringing the status of these organizations closer to the role of a de facto co-author of public policy.

Voting rights for immigrants?

The most interesting part of the report is point 10 of the draft resolution, which concerns the political participation of diaspora representatives. It sets out three recommendations addressed to member states. The first calls on those states that have not yet done so to ratify the 1992 Convention on the Participation of Foreigners in Public Life at the Local Level. The second concerns promoting the political activity of persons already entitled to vote. The third, and the furthest-reaching, proposes exploring the feasibility of expanding the right of certain categories of diaspora members to vote and stand for office in national elections. This last proposal marks a qualitative breakthrough, since no binding Council of Europe instrument has so far regulated the right of foreigners to take part in parliamentary or presidential elections.

At the outset of the same point, the Assembly stipulates that it acts without prejudice to the restrictions on the political rights of foreigners permitted under the European Convention on Human Rights, whose Article 16 provides that the Convention’s provisions on freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association, and the prohibition of discrimination are not to be understood as precluding a state’s right to impose restrictions on the political activity of foreigners. The three recommendations described above, however, head in precisely the opposite direction—toward a gradual narrowing of the field within which such permissible restrictions could be applied by states.

This proposal had already appeared in earlier Assembly documents. In Resolution 2043 of 2015, the Assembly came out in favor of granting foreigners the right to vote and stand for office in local and regional elections after a period of residence not exceeding five years (point 9.1.2 of Resolution 2043/2015). The explanatory memorandum also recalls that the 1992 Convention on the Participation of Foreigners in Public Life at the Local Level treats this right as optional, yet Finland went further, granting it after only two years of residence, as did Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Ireland. The memorandum also invokes, without any critical comment, the British Migrant Democracy Project initiative, which demands voting rights for all residents regardless of citizenship—something that can be read as the author’s tacit approval of proposals reaching further than those set out explicitly in the resolution itself. It is interesting, moreover, that the rapporteur himself concedes, in point 52 of the explanatory memorandum, that voter turnout among foreigners already entitled to vote is consistently and significantly lower than among citizens, which he explains by language barriers and poor familiarity with the political institutions of the country of residence. He notes, however, that this turnout rises with the length of stay and the acquisition of citizenship, which he treats as an argument for further investment in civic education rather than against the very idea of expanding political rights.

For Poland, this would mean having to overcome a barrier far more serious than an ordinary change of statute. Article 62(1) of Poland’s 1997 Constitution ties the right to vote exclusively to citizenship, and changing this principle would require amending the country’s fundamental law rather than an ordinary legislative procedure.

Financial support for diasporas

Point 11.4 of the draft resolution recommends providing “stable, structural funding” to organizations working on behalf of diasporas, so that they can participate on a lasting basis in shaping public policy. The resolution specifies neither the scale of such funding nor any mechanisms for overseeing how the money is spent, confining itself to the general call for increased public spending on third-sector organizations representing these communities. In practice, this would mean a permanent financial link between selected non-governmental entities and state and local-government budgets, with no clear criteria indicated for awarding such support.

Consultative councils as the voice of diaspora representatives

Point 11.3 of the resolution proposes creating “properly funded and representative foreigners’ consultative councils” at the local and national levels. The explanatory memorandum cites numerous examples of bodies of this type that already exist, from Lisbon through the Finnish cities of Turku and Tampere to the German district-level Integrationsbeiräte, elected directly by non-citizen residents. Tellingly, the rapporteur himself admits, in point 62 of the explanatory memorandum, that the effectiveness of these institutions is sometimes limited by their purely advisory character and their dependence on the prevailing political will, which risks reducing them to a symbolic role. This rare moment of self-criticism does not, however, lead the author to conclude that these initiatives should be curtailed but, on the contrary, to a call for strengthening them institutionally still further.

The Church as a point of integration

A separate part of the explanatory memorandum deals with the role of religious communities, including the Catholic Church, invoked through the example of the activities of the Catholic charity CAFOD among the Ghanaian diaspora in London and the multilingual St. Eugenia parish in Sweden (points 30–35 of the explanatory memorandum). The report, however, treats religious communities primarily in functional terms, as one of many “multidimensional hubs” of integration alongside language courses or legal assistance. Among the examples cited is also the Swedish Syriac Orthodox Church, described as a community that effectively builds internal bonds, though—as the rapporteur himself notes—one that in places struggles to open up fully to the broader host society.

Islamists to the rescue of “reciprocal and structural” integration?

The explanatory memorandum also invokes the activity of the Muslim youth organization FEMYSO, which runs training sessions on democratic engagement in cooperation with the Council of Europe: “Empirical evidence demonstrates that strong religious engagement in itself can transform potential disadvantages associated with minority status, equipping individuals with social capital and resilience that enhance integration outcomes – provided the institutional context is sufficiently inclusive. In Belgium, the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations (FEMYSO), with a strong diasporic element, organises regular international study sessions in partnership with the Council of Europe to train young diasporic Muslim people in democratic engagement, among other skills.”

The inclusion of this example in a report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe may come as a surprise after the widely noted report published last year by the French government, titled “The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islamism in France” (French: Frères musulmans et islamisme politique en France), which report, available on the French Interior Ministry’s website, confirms FEMYSO’s strong links with the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood’s approach to integration—the Brotherhood being banned in several Muslim countries on account of its ties to Islamism and Islamic terrorism—is described in the following way in the French report: “The model of Islamism shaped by the Muslim Brotherhood, and stemming from a political ideology that has been Westernized in order to introduce it into Europe, combines the implantation of a Middle Eastern tradition in the countries of settlement with the tactical concealment of a subversive integralism. The latter nonetheless remains recognizable by its unchanging and characteristic dogmas.”

The role of diaspora youth

The final significant thread of the PACE report concerns diaspora youth, presented as a group with particular potential for the “renewal of democratic life.” The explanatory memorandum draws on statements by representatives of organizations such as VOICIFY and the DiasporaVote platform (points 36–45), while the draft resolution, in points 12.1 and 12.2, calls respectively for systematically holding exchanges of views with diaspora representatives in connection with every report concerning their rights, and for creating a permanent mentorship program linking diaspora youth with members of the Assembly. The rapporteur cites an account of an exchange of views with pupils from London secondary schools, during which young people with roots reaching back to Albania, Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Ghana spoke openly of feeling “between two cultures” and of the need for representation as early as the level of school councils. Summing up this thread, the rapporteur states that documents and declarations alone are not enough, and that institutions should move from consultation to the co-creation of policies (points 41 and 44 of the explanatory memorandum).

Although the report of the Committee on Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation addresses a range of topics relating to diasporas in the broad sense, its most important element remains point 10 of the draft resolution, calling on member states to explore the possibility of expanding the right of foreigners to vote and stand for office in national elections. This proposal, however generally and cautiously worded, fits into a broader and visible trend of granting foreigners wider political rights, or even placing them on an equal footing in this respect with a state’s own citizens—an example being the Spanish government’s decision of January 2026 to legalize the residence of roughly half a million people staying in the country illegally.

In this context, it should also be borne in mind that the report itself, although not a legally binding document, is not without significance. It can be classed among the so-called soft-law instruments which, while not formally binding law, nonetheless influence legislation at the national and international levels.

That is why there is cause for concern in the actions taken by politicians in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, operating far from their voters, especially since in many European countries the share of immigrants and their descendants in the population is steadily rising and is already very significant.

Patryk Ignaszczak – analyst at the Ordo Iuris Center for International Law

See also:

• The Migration Pact and the Protection of the EU’s External Borders in 26 Questions and Answers
• Ordo Iuris Urges EU Leaders to Act Against Spain’s Mass Migrant Regularization Plan
• Polish Premiere of the Report “Taking Back Control from Brussels: The Renationalization of EU Migration and Asylum Policies”
• Tusk’s Poland Increasingly Open to Illegal Immigrants
• ECHR: Hungary Violated the Rights of Three Illegal Immigrants by “Collectively” Expelling Them

Source of cover photo: iStock