Those of you who’ve been reading this blog since 2010 will probably know this, but it struck me this week that many of you don’t. So here is a public service announcement on the intersection between democracy and being an immigrant.
I appreciate that my origin and citizenship status are somewhat murky, not helped by the fact that I self-identify as European. I was born in Bulgaria, I left there when I was 10 and at the age of 16 I was granted Austrian citizenship. I have lived in the UK for 14 years now, longer than in any other country. I am still legally Austrian, and only Austrian. Austria is somewhat particular about dual nationality (basically, if you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, you’re allowed it; if you’re me the hoops are not worth jumping through). I would technically qualify for UK citizenship but I have good reasons – none of them sentimental – to hang on to my Austrian passport.
I am registered to vote in the UK, but as an EU citizen, I can only do so in local and European Parliament elections – not general elections. I can vote in general elections in Austria but I never have. By the time the first elections after my 18th birthday [1] came around I had left the country and was reasonably sure I wasn’t going back.
Here’s what I am allowed to do in the UK: I’m allowed to pay tax. Quite a lot of it. [2] I am, in all fairness, allowed to be mouthy and obnoxious about being an immigrant, sometimes even in the national press. I am allowed to ruin a good pair of shoes in aid of a national referendum campaign. But I’m not allowed to vote in said referendum. I am allowed to be blamed for every single failure of this government. But I don’t have a say in who forms the next one.
This is where Let Me Vote comes in. Let Me Vote is a European Citizens’ Initiative – if it manages to collect 1,000,000 signatures from EU citizens, the European Commission will at least have to think about putting forward legislation to allow EU citizens resident in other EU countries to vote in their country of residence. It would remove one more of the millions of barriers to the free movement of people within the Union. It would mean that we would no longer be second-class people the minute we set foot outside our country of citizenship – at least politically. It would mean that when your Mum and Dad retire to Spain or Bulgaria, they would have a political say in what happens around them.
If you’re worried about immigrants voting in your country, remember that Commonwealth citizens are already allowed to vote in general elections in the UK. Also remember that lots of British people move abroad, and after 15 years they lose the right to vote in the UK, leaving them in a strange kind of political purgatory where there is nowhere for them to exercise their democratic rights. Remember that even if you reduce the European Union to its economic basics, the Common Market is still about the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
So head over to Let Me Vote and sign the ECI.
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[1] Austria lowered the voting age to 16 in 2007.

[2] Note that I don’t think my tax payer status entitles me to anything. But with the amount of immigrant scapegoating in British political rhetoric, it’s become a reflex to point it out.

The 1st of April this year saw the entry into force of a key new citizen engagement tool at a European Union level, the European Citizens’ Initiative. First set out in the Lisbon Treaty, the ECI allows one million EU citizens representing at least seven member states to call on the European Commission to initiate legislation in a policy area that falls under the EU’s competency. So far so good – it’s a great idea, giving citizens powers equal to the European Parliament and the Council (of the European Union – not the European Council or Council of Europe – but now I’m just being facetious) to request the Commission to initiate legislation. The implementation, however, is sub-optimal to say the least.
It is telling that the domain citizens-initiative.eu is owned by a group campaigning for the initiative rather than the Commission or another EU institution. To find the official website of the ECI you have to delve into the Commission’s website – which is unwieldy at the best of times. It is also telling that three weeks in, there are currently no formally registered open initiatives. Say what you will about the current incarnation of the UK government’s e-petition website, but on day one is was attracting 1000 hits a minute, taking the site down, and pro-death-penalty campaigners managed to get nearly 1500 signatures by mid-afternoon.
At EU level, things move at a rather more leisurely pace. There are a few reasons for this. Of course, working at a transnational level presents additional complexities over and above what a national government might face. Having to reconcile the interests and views of 27 separate member states, as well as work in 23 official languages will add a certain amount of overhead to even the simplest of undertakings. Yet just the fact that the ECI needs a 5MB, 32-page guide book tells me the number of hoops citizens have to jump through to create a successful initiative are disproportionate and likely to put off all but the most determined. Here are just a few areas where the European Citizens’ Initiative could do better.
The Citizens’ Committee
Each citizens’ initiative needs an organising committee made up of seven EU citizens resident in seven different member states. “This committee is considered as the official “organiser” of the initiative and is responsible for managing the procedure throughout.” The committee needs to be in place before you can register your ECI on the Commission’s website. Compare this to the five minutes it takes to set up an e-petition to “[b]an rioters and looters from holding passports” in the UK, and the timescale for setting up an ECI starts looking positively geological.
Of course, we’re looking at two extremes here. The UK approach is highly likely to get you some pretty ludicrous stuff – but equally, the silliest petitions are unlikely to get a huge number of signatures. And let’s face it, if you can get 300,000 people to declare themselves Jedi then maybe you deserve your day in Parliament anyway.
Requiring an organising committee from seven member states, on the other hand, makes initiation of ECIs highly exclusive and reserved for the European “elites”. Yes, I may have easy access to the right people, but I am fluent in three languages and have lived in five members states myself! Additionally, the time commitment required from committee members is hardly sustainable for the average EU citizen with a full-time job and a family. Between raising funds, making your funding transparent, getting your materials translated into 23 languages and publicising your initiative, you would pretty much be giving up about two years of your life.
There are a couple of good reasons why you might want something slightly more organised than the UK e-petition approach, generally to do with inclusion. Having representatives from seven member states on your committee makes it more likely that you will get the required minimum number of signatures from each country; you will have local expertise on the ground to help you promote your initiative rather than simply releasing it into the wild and hoping it goes viral on the internet. It also helps you remember that you need to reach out beyond the internet, opening access to ECIs to the one in four EU citizens who have never been online.
Both of these are good ideas in principle. What strikes me, though, is that when the Commission set about resolving implementational issues with the ECI, their guiding principles probably were around making everything water-tight, rather than making it functional with the least amount of hassle possible. While this is the right approach for transnational legislation, when it comes to citizen engagement I’d be inclined to err on the side of open and accessible rather than bureaucratic.
Signing a Citizens’ Initiative
Organising a citizens’ initiative is not without its challenges – but neither is signing one. For a start, unlike Direct Gov’s e-petition website, there isn’t a Commission site where you can simply add your support to an initiative. Every ECI has to build its own signature collection site which – this is my favourite bit – has to comply with the Commission’s technical specification as laid out in the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 1179/2011 of 17 November 2011. I dare you to read through all seven pages of that!
There is a silver lining here. The Commission has actually developed open source software (and kudos to them for it being open source!) which already meets the technical requirements. However,

Organisers will need to ensure that the other elements of their online collection system – i.e. the hardware, hosting environment, business processes and staff – also comply with the remaining technical specifications of the Annex to Regulation (EU) No 1179/2011, namely: points 2.1, 2.2, 2.15 to 2.20.2 and 3.4.
Once their online collection system is set up and fully complies with the technical specifications, organisers should request the competent national authority of the member state where the data will be stored to certify the system.

Why the Commission doesn’t just run a central ECI signature site is anybody’s guess.
There is another issue with regards to the amount and nature of the personal data you have to surrender to sign the petition. Because signatures are validated by individual member states, each member state has different requirements for the data they would like from you. So if you’re Austrian you have to provide your passport or ID card number as well as (judging from the sample form in the guide book) your date and place of birth and your full address. If you’re Finnish you get away with just your date of birth and country of permanent residence, and no need for an identifying document. If you’re Belgian and live abroad, you have to have told the Belgian authorities about it. The rules are ambiguous, but a number of countries don’t explicitly state that foreign nationals resident in that country are eligible to sign. So if you’re Belgian, living in the Czech Republic and haven’t told your embassy that your permanent residence is now in Prague you may not be able to sign an ECI in either your country of residence or your country of citizenship.
The rather awkwardly named but otherwise very helpful Initiative for the European Citizens’ Initiative estimates that up to 20% of signatures could be invalidated by national authorities and advises to aim for collecting around 1,250,000 signatures rather than the 1,000,000 headline figure. With rules as complex as this, that is not surprising – but disappointing nonetheless.
Who can (afford to) run an initiative?
It should be apparent from the above that there are significant costs associated with running an ECI. Even assuming you can get your translation into 23 languages done by volunteers and get some pro bono legal advice on whether your idea falls under EU competency, you’re still likely to have printing costs for your publicity materials and signature collection forms, and significant technical costs for hardware, hosting and administering your online signature collection system. Given the number and nature of hoops to jump through, hiring an intern or three might not be a bad plan. So as well as getting people to support your idea, give up their personal data and possibly some of their time to help out, you are now suddenly asking them for money as well – which of course adds another layer of bureaucracy to the whole thing.
The rules state explicitly that ECIs cannot be run by organisations; they have to be run by individuals. Organisations can still support an initiative (including financially), but the initiative’s funding has to be transparent. In principle these are good ideas. They’re designed to prevent professional lobbyists from hijacking the tool for their own purposes. Yet the implementation here seems both heavy-handed and inadequate. There is nothing stopping organisations from nominating individuals to run the initiative – and while funding transparency provides some additional protection I suspect there are ways around it. Equally, “organisations” is a very broad term. There are plenty of civil society organisations which simply represent citizens, and arguably there is no harm in them running an initiative. I would for instance love to see an initiative on digital rights supported by the Open Rights Group, the Chaos Computer Club, La Quadrature du Net, various Pirate Parties and other similar organisations.
A number of factors come together here to make the ECI process even more exclusive. The Commission’s failure to provide a single signature collection website saves costs for the EU by outsourcing them to citizens running an initiative. This in turn pushes up the cost of running ECIs, making the process inaccessible to those without either money or serious fundraising skills. The “no organisations” rule exacerbates this further, while not necessarily being effective at preventing lobbyists from hijacking initiatives.
Where next?
As someone who self-defines as European above all else and who passionately believes in the European project, I think the principle of the Citizens’ Initiative is a great idea. I very much want it to succeed. Despite not being fully registered on the website yet, there are a few initiatives out there already. High(and low)lights include the Let Me Vote, the Gay Marriage, the Right to Life, and the Free Sunday initiatives.
I very much hope the Commission monitors the progress of these early initiatives and gets feedback both from those who run them as well as those who thought of starting an ECI and were put off by the bureaucracy of it all. Citizen engagement should be about openness and accessibility, aiming to make it easy for people to get involved. The ECI doesn’t quite hit the mark here – yet.

So, I’m spending my winterval holidays with my parents in Germany. I’ve not really been following German politics for years now, but a few things have jumped out at me over the last couple of days which I thought I’d share.
Germany is currently governed by a government which, in name at least, doesn’t look that different from our glorious overlords: a coalition of the main centre-right party with a smaller liberal party. And yet, here are just a couple of the news headlines I’ve picked up over the last few days:

• The government, the opposition and pretty much the entire political establishment have unequivocally rejected demands from the airport security industry to introduce passenger profiling. All the comments I’ve heard have been along the lines of “WTF, that’s racist!” So proud of Germany.
• The government has announced that they will cut down the number of practically-unpaid, benefit supported private sector jobs (where tax money is basically used to subsidise businesses who don’t pay their employees enough to live on) and instead create more public sector jobs.

And of course LibCon has already covered the story of the German government’s approach to the recession and how Germany is now reaping the rewards with strong growth and low unemployment.
Just to provide some balanced coverage and show that the grass isn’t always greener, another topic currently under discussion is the introduction of a national minimum wage, which still doesn’t exist in Germany. (In all fairness, there is less of a need for it as trade unions are still relatively strong here and tend to negotiate minimum wages for their industries as part of the regular pay negotiations.) Still, the government is actually beginning to move in the right direction on this too.
But yeah… food for thought on what a centre-right government could look like. There are a few bones I have to pick with the CDU, but looking at the snapshot above I’ve little trouble believing that they are genuinely motivated by working in the national interest. With the Tories… well, you decide.

Those who’ve ever asked me where I’m from will know that I tend to give one of two answers to that question: either “It’s complicated” or “I’m European”. People never seem to be satisfied with either of those, so I then end up launching into a lengthy explanation of my origins, legal status and history, after which they reach the conclusion that either “It’s complicated” or “I’m European”.
Today is, apparently, Europe Day, and as a European, I almost feel an obligation to post something about it. A lot of people have been posting about their visions for a future Europe, but I thought I’d have a look into the past instead. I’d like to revisit some of my defining European moments – some of the things that have happened over the last 30 years that have made me European.
Age 10, changing my watch as I crossed into a different time zone
I left the country of my birth – both for the first time and permanently – at the age of 10. My grandmother was a staunch Bulgarian patriot. Her grandmother had fought in an uprising against the Ottoman Empire. And so she had imbued me from an early age with a strong sense of pride in my country. Bulgarian was the greatest language, Bulgaria the most beautiful country, etc. This was probably just as well as it gave me a kind of confidence in myself, a sense that I didn’t need to justify myself for being Bulgarian, which would serve me well over the years to come.
So leaving the country in the back of my father’s car, moving somewhere where I didn’t speak the language or know the first thing about how things worked, was an interesting experience. I remember thinking that this was a momentous occasion in my life but not being really sure how I should feel about it. I remember driving through the border regions which really are extraordinarily beautiful, crossing the then-Yugoslav border and finding that the landscape was still the same – and still beautiful – on the other side. And as I changed my watch to CET, I remember my father saying how privileged I was to be doing this for the first time aged 10. He’s picked up some East German hitch-hikers in their 20s recently and that had been the first time they’d crossed into a different time zone.
The final thing I remember about that long drive from Sofia to Bruck and der Mur in Austria, through a war-torn Yugoslavia and the wide Hungarian plains, is getting to the Austrian border at 9pm on July 31st 1991. “I’m sorry,” said the border official to my Dad, “your family’s visas don’t actually start until the 1st of August. We can’t let you into the country before midnight.” And so we slept at the Austro-Hungarian border for three hours, before finally being allowed into the country that would be my home for the next eight years.
“But Mili’s different.”
My relationship with Austria had its ups and downs.
I picked up German fairly quickly, and was generally accepted by my classmates. When my German still wasn’t that good, they did all they could to help me out. Once it became better, the main emphasis changed to making me speak the local dialect. It was entertaining.
We moved to Austria at the same time as a very large number of refugees from the various wars that marked the demise of Yugoslavia. The town we lived in had a significant refugee population and there was a refugee centre where they lived, were looked after and were taught German. As the staff there knew Austrian immigration laws inside out they had been involved with helping my Dad and his employer sort out our paperwork when we originally moved there. We kept in touch with them and a few years later my mother ended up teaching German to the refugees as her first ever job in Austria.
Bruck and Kapfenberg – more of a conurbation than two distinct towns – aren’t exactly big. Between them they had about 70,000 inhabitants at the time, and the influx of refugees was visible. I remember a discussion starting one day at school – we would have been 11 or 12 at the time, and it was of all things in the equivalent of a home economics class – about the refugees. The teacher didn’t start the discussion, but clearly felt the obligation to guide it to some sort of constructive place. I sat to one side of the class listening silently as my classmates – my friends – went on for a good quarter of an hour about the lazy refugees who had everything handed to them – food, clothing, housing, and a daily allowance to boot – who couldn’t be bothered to work or even learn German. With hindsight a school trip to the refugee centre would have been a good idea, but what preoccupied me at the time was that the word my friends used, “foreigners”, included me too. Did they see me in this way? I certainly wasn’t going to draw attention to myself at that point and ask them, but my teacher did.
I will never forget the answer: “But Mili’s different.”
“My Dad spent all last night pacing up and down waiting for the referendum results.”
Austrians are the most apolitical people I have met in my life. Out of the 65 years since the end of World War 2, Austria has been governed by a Grand Coalition of the conservative People’s Party and the Social Democrats for 37 years. Yes, that would be like Labour going into coalition with the Tories. Only in Austria. Politics isn’t something that is overtly discussed in Austria, and admitting interest in it is almost like showing people your porn stash.
When in 1994 the country conducted a referendum on EU accession, I had pretty definite views about it. For me, EU accession would sooner or later open more doors, give me more opportunities. I was for it. I found it really hard to judge the popular mood though, because no one was showing me their porn stash. So all I could do was sit there and await the referendum results. When they finally came in – a resounding Yes – I was happy. What surprised me was that my friend Petra came into school that day and said “My Dad spent all last night pacing up and down, waiting for the referendum results, hoping it would be a yes.” Maybe some of them did care about politics after all, and maybe they weren’t quite as insular as I’d originally thought.
Austrian citizenship
The process of getting Austrian citizenship was an interesting one. We applied well before the official minimum timings, after about 6 years of living in Austria. We thought we had a chance. We had integrated well into Austrian society. Both my parents worked, my Dad was a competitive sportsman, my friends’ efforts to make me speak the local Styrian dialect were paying off to the point I almost sounded native.
I remember the day our application was approved. We were asked to attend an appointment with the official who’d been working our case. The paperwork was completed. My parents were asked to swear an oath of allegiance. I was still a minor so they swore it on my behalf too. We were advised we had to give our Bulgarian passports back to the embassy to be invalidated. And we walked out of there with a piece of paper declaring us Austrian citizens, with official stamps worth 12,000 shillings (about 700 quid, more like a grand in today’s money) attached to it. It’s the most expensive piece of A4 paper my family own.
I remember my mother feeling slightly iffy that day, trading in one citizenship for another. Austria’s not a fan of dual citizenship – something which plagues me to this day. For me, being Austrian meant a whole new set of doors opening.
Meeting William Hague
Not one of my finest moments. I was a little preoccupied with other things. Funny though.
I was at the Vienna International School by that point. I came in one morning, 2 hours late as I’d decided to skip the first two periods to have coffee with someone who was later to become my boyfriend. I was asked to the office of the Head of the Secondary School (who was also my philosophy teacher). “Bugger, I thought. I’ve been caught this time.” (Skipping class was an activity I had a lot of practice at – I’d had a couple of near-misses at previous schools but never been caught.)
When I went to see Mr. D, though, he didn’t even seem to know that I’d only just walked through the door. Or possibly he was willing to turn a blind eye to it. What he did say was that we had the leader of the UK Conservative Party (newly in opposition) coming to visit, with a team from the BBC, and would I be willing to be part of a group of students asking him – and I quote! – “difficult questions about why Britain is so awkward in the EU”. Mr. D, who was British but whose political leanings I wouldn’t even want to try to guess, clearly had me pegged as a European even before I started calling myself one.
To this day I’ve no idea what Mr. Hague was doing at an international school in Vienna, what the programme was about or whether our bit ever got in. And to be fair when the next day I sat in that room with him and my classmates I was still far too preoccupied with having met Oliver the previous day to say anything intelligent. But the experience did give me a glimpse into UK political culture and attitudes to Europe. Didn’t put me off moving here though.
My first 5 Euros
On January 1st 2002, shortly after midnight, I walked to the local cash machine and got my first ever five Euros. The intention was to keep that five Euro note at the back of my wallet for all eternity, to take it out and show it to the grandchildren, all that faff. A couple of years later a friend I’d given my wallet to to buy drinks spent it. Ah well, nevermind.
But I do also remember the first time I did extensive travel through the Euro zone. I’d done a fair amount of travel before and juggled currencies all over the place. Rather unexpectedly in mid-2002 I found myself in the course of one weekend going from Austria to Germany to the Netherlands and back to Germany, and not having to faff with currency. It was a strange realisation.
EU enlargement to the East
I must admit I wasn’t always in favour of EU enlargement into Eastern Europe, particularly not as quickly as it happened. I was studying European politics at the time, up to my eyeballs in treaty texts and the working or otherwise of EU institutions, and really didn’t think the EU could cope with an additional 10-12 members before it had had a chance to implement fundamental institutional reform, for which there was little appetite. From an Eastern European point of view, I also thought those countries should be given a chance to stand on their own and develop their own structures and identities for a little longer before becoming part of the EU. They had been under Soviet influence for half a century and less than 10 years later they were joining another international political bloc. I would have liked to see what they would have done on their own for a while.
Having said that, I believe EU enlargement has overall been a success, and has been beneficial for both sides. I lived in Prague for three months in 2003, about a year before accession, and the excitement among my Czech colleagues was palpable. It was great to see.
My personal Europe moment when it comes to enlargement is an article on BBC News covering the accession of Bulgaria and Romania. The BBC have since replaced the photo, but the original photo used was of a man waving Bulgarian flags and wearing an extremely nationalistic Bulgarian t-shirt.
Voting for the first time
I was just the wrong side of the age cut-off to vote in the notorious Austrian elections which put the Freedom Party in government and caused the first ever mass political demonstrations I had seen in Austria. I had actually also left the country by that point. I promised myself I’d make sure I got an absentee ballot for next time round. By the time the next election came round, though, I had done the research and found the absentee ballot process to be hideously bureaucratic, and I had been living in the UK for three years. My connections with Austria were few and far between (I had split up with Oliver 6 months before), and I was so out of touch I couldn’t make an informed decision, or one that would affect me directly in the foreseeable future.
So the first time I actually ever voted was in the UK, not too many years ago, in a local election. I make it a point these days to exercise my right to vote in local and European elections, and I continue to hope that one day EU citizens living in an EU country other than that they’re citizens of will be able to vote in their country of residence.
I am European
Time to nail my colours to the mast, in case the above was too subtle.
All of these experiences, and many many more, have contributed to my strong feeling that I am European. I’m not a fan of golf, but the Ryder Cup is about the only sporting event that I actually support a team in – because that team is European. I firmly believe in, in the words of the Maastricht Treaty, “ever closer union”. I am one of those weird people who would actually love to see a federal European Union. I certainly believe that there is still a lot of scope for EU institutional reform before the institutions are fit for purpose in a 27-member Union, and that recent waves of enlargement haven’t helped with that. But equally I hope and believe that somehow we will muddle through.
Personally have benefited hugely from the European Union. But I believe it has also brought a huge number of benefits to everyone living within its borders. The global political and economic environment is increasingly such that individual nation states find it difficult to face it on their own. The nature of the challenges we face is such that we all – as Europe, and as a world – need to look at them together.
So yes, I am a fierce internationalist, and above all, I am European.