EU election in Austria

“Over half a million people excluded”

The European elections will take place on June 9 and all EU citizens who have their main residence in Austria and wish to vote in the European elections in Austria must be registered in the European voter registry of an Austrian municipality. This must be done by application by the deadline of March 26 at the latest.

However, according to Statistik Austria, only very few people are aware of this, meaning that over half a million people in Austria did not vote in 2019. The VOLT party now wants to change this. They have launched a new website with all the information needed to register. 

"The website is called www.voteurope.eu and we have set ourselves the goal of better informing non-Austrian EU citizens in Austria that they have to meet certain deadlines if they actually want to vote on June 9," says Nini Tsiklauri, lead candidate of Volt Austria. 

Nini Tsiklauri, lead candidate of Volt Austria(Bild: krone.tv)

"It's absolutely easy. There are currently 14 languages on the website. We are trying to increase the number of languages and there are very easy steps describing how to do this."

The pan-European Volt party believes that the German government is primarily responsible. It provides EU citizens with little to no information about the European elections. 

"It is not communicated clearly enough to EU citizens in Austria that they have to register to vote in the EU elections. And I believe the municipalities and the federal government have a duty to do this," says Tsiklauri.