es de en fr it

The loss of those rights is one of the consequences of the sovereign decision of the UK to withdraw from the European Union.

EP has resided in France since 1984 and is married to a French citizen. She has not acquired French nationality by marriage because, as a former official in the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom, she took an oath of allegiance to the Queen of England. Upon the entry into force of the Withdrawal Agreement, the INSEE1 removed EP from the electoral list of the Commune of Thoux (France). She was thus unable to participate in the municipal elections held on 15 March and 28 June 2020.

On 6 October 2020, EP filed an application for re-registration on the electoral roll for non-French citizens of the European Union. On the following day, the Mayor of the Commune of Thoux rejected that application. EP then referred the matter to the Electoral Commission of the Commune of Thoux. Since that body responded by stating that it was not due to convene until March 2021, EP treated that reply as an implicit confirmation of the Mayor’s decision of 7 October 2020. Accordingly, on 9 November 2020, EP brought an action to contest that decision before the Tribunal judiciaire d’Auch (Court of Auch - the referring court).

The referring court put forward four questions in the context of a dispute as to whether EP, a British national, continues to enjoy the rights to vote and to stand as a candidate in municipal elections in France. The first and second questions inquired as to whether British nationals, or a subset thereof, continue to be Union citizens and enjoy the benefits of that status. If that were not the case, the third and fourth questions request the Court to assess the validity of the Withdrawal Agreement2 , notably in the light of the principle of proportionality.

In today’s Opinion Advocate General Collins considers firstly that Union citizenship is additional to, and does not replace, nationality conferred by the Member States. The case-law of the Court of Justice, notably the judgments in Rottmann, 3 in Tjebbes 4 and, most recently, in Wiener Landesregierung, 5 explicitly recognises that Member States retain the power to determine who is a national and, in consequence, who is a Union citizen.