Luxembourg missed a big chance. Not the
Luxembourgers, but their government, parties and NGOs (the least these latter,
but still).
The referendum held Sunday (7th June)
contained three questions:
The decrease of the voting age to 16 years
The right of foreign citizens who have been
living ten years in Luxembourg and had voted already once on a local or
European election (which is a right of every European citizen who lives in another
EU country than of which he/she is citizen) to vote also in the Luxembourg
national elections.
The limitation of the mandate of members of
government to two cycles (ten years).
The result was a triple "no".
After the vote, commentators emphasised
that the surveys before the vote already predicted the result but not such an
overwhelming majority of negative votes. It took a day for the comments by
those to appear, who regretted the result.
Before, apart from some newspaper articles
and very few posters (mainly from the liberal Democratic Party), the campaign
was just simmering on low heat.
Of course the first and the third questions
were less important, but not totally unimportant.
Some background: Luxembourg has been
governed for some twenty years, till the snap elections in autumn 2013 by a
government presided by Jean-Claude Juncker. The economic success, quality of
life and European prestige of the country show that not without results.
However, the Juncker-government showed signs of fatigue in the last period and
more than 50% of the citizens surveyed before the elections wanted change (and
still most voters voted for Juncker's Christian Socialist Party, but not enough
to give it a majority and so a three-party coalition took over the wheel). So
limiting the mandate of ministers clearly had no real supporting experience.
I had an interesting discussion with a
Luxembourger (affiliated to one of the opposition parties at that time) who
regretted that in spite of the support of the government, only a little above
60% of Luxembourgers voted in favour of the European Constitution (which then
lost out in France and the Netherlands). When I tried to joke with my eastern
European mind that the government support was probably counter-productive, she
vehemently denied that possibility. Some commentators actually also ascribed
the failure to the late start of the government's campaign.
The "no" to decreasing the voting
age will certainly be a negative message to youngsters interested in the public
affairs (or politics) of their country. The society being maybe even more aged
than elsewhere in Europe (a bigger part of the younger working population not
being a citizen), this can also be explained-
The real failure, however, was on the
question of the voting right for "foreigners".
Almost half of the people living in
Luxembourg are "foreigners", i.e. living in Luxembourg but not
Luxembourgish citizens. Add to this (although they were not affected by the
referendum question) about 150 thousand (more than 40% of the workforce) people
coming over across the boarder every day to work in the country. This gave the
main argument of the partisans of the "yes": almost half of the
inhabitants affected by Luxembourg politics have no right to influence it.
Luxembourg society is actually not
xenophobe (therefore the surprise and disappointment of many about the result).
I have to tell also that friendliness towards foreigners stops at a certain
level – to me this is a natural compensation for good relationship on the
surface but I have no proof for it. And the language question taints the picture.
This is maybe the first factor in explaining the result: to become a citizen is
not very difficult – residence of 7 years which is less than the 10 in the
proposal for voting rights, participation in three courses (no exam, just
participation) and a not too high level of knowledge of the local language, a
franco-german dialect. So the real difference in conditions is the knowledge of
the language. The official languages in the country, however, are three, they
include German and French, and still most of the official correspondence is in
French.
But in my opinion, the one of the real
problems was that until recently, the direction favoured by the political
actors to integrate foreigners was to ease the acquisition of citizenship
(decreasing required time of residence to 5 years, there were even voices that
a lower level of language exam could be accepted, maybe under additional
conditions) and a proposal for a law was also submitted to the parliament (the
Chamber of deputies, as it is called). So the change in direction left probably
many wondering why to give vote to those who are not eligible or do not want to
acquire citizenship. My two-element sample (which is not much, I know), two
people from totally distinct backgrounds) says, though that they would be
interested to influence Luxembourg politics but not take up citizenship and
they have valid reasons for that.
The other problem is that it is never easy
to move people – in particular conservatively minded people; and the
Luxembourgers are conservative – to accept radical changes. And that’s what I
missed most, was the explanation of the basics. "Democratic deficit"
was the slogan. But apparently people who are "inside the fence" will
not let others in just because they are told they should. And no one explained
why the voting right could benefit them, and in particular not what is at stake
concerning the relationship between Luxembourgers (again: a lot of retired
people; and a lot of them working for the administration) and the
"foreigners" who actually produce a big chunk of their pension and
the resources for government expenditures, including a well-developed social
system and the salaries of administration staff. There is a "country
branding" campaign going on – no one thought about the impact on the
country brand of the result? But this can be considered as blackmail: no other
country ever asked this question and these are not considered not foreigner-friendly
just because they didn’t ask, while Luxembourg created itself a problem by
asking, as the “no” answer can be interpreted in a way that they do not want to
give this right to foreigners who live and produce in – and for - their country.
The dominant opposition party, the
Christian Socialists were campaigning in favour of a "no". No
arguments were heard, my suspicion is that they simply wanted to hit the
government – as revenge that after the last elections they were left out of
government in spite that they sent the most deputies to the Chamber and in the
hope that this speeds up their return to power as the popularity of the
government is fading. What is interesting is that practically the biggest group
of people who would gain voting rights are the Portuguese workers, most of
whom, coming from a rural area, would vote Christian.
The Christian Socialists exploited their
"victory" at least in a positive way: they submitted a proposal for a
law easing the conditions to gain citizenship. So far, so good, let's see what
follows. But a lot of soul-searching and discussion cannot be saved – as the
Association for Migration and Integration put it: the discussion is not
finished, it is just launched by the result.
