Briton wins right to be on EU electoral roll in historic French court ruling

A local French court has ordered that a British retiree be put back on the electoral lists for the European elections – a ruling that is the first of its kind since Brexit.

Britons who do not have French, or another EU member state citizenship, were struck off the lists post-Brexit.

Previously, as EU citizens, they were able to vote in French municipal and European elections by being placed on two related electoral rolls.

Former UK civil servant Alice Bouilliez, who is in her 60s, has mounted legal action since 2020, supported pro bono by French lawyer Julien Fouchet, in repeated attempts to challenge the effects of Brexit.

Their cases have focused on her loss of voting rights, which, initially, left her unable to vote anywhere due to a combination of Brexit and the UK’s policy at the time of cutting off its citizens from voting after more than 15 years abroad.

Though married to a French citizen, Mrs Bouilliez never sought citizenship, partly as she made an oath to the British Crown in her former job.

Mr Fouchet, of Corneille, Fouchet, Manetti, is an EU law specialist and is convinced that Britons’ EU citizenship and associated rights should not have been lost automatically due to the Brexit vote.

The team has suffered setbacks, including a 2022 European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling that Britons are no longer EU citizens and EU states are not obliged to let them vote in municipal elections. 

However, now the court of Auch has ruled that Mrs Bouilliez must be put back on the European election lists.

It said losing her European vote, as well as the municipal vote, had amounted to “a disproportionate attack on [her] rights and freedoms”.

The right to vote is protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, it added. Mrs Bouilliez, who first read about Mr Fouchet in a 2017 Connexion article, said she hopes the ruling will lead to a wider rethink of the rights of Britons in the EU.

“I felt it was unfair that our acquired rights could be dismissed in such a cavalier way and the court has agreed with the intricate work that Julien, and his colleague Jean-Noël, have done for us. I’m so happy it’s not been for nothing.”

She added that “when you live somewhere you were not born, it’s important to integrate and to have an iron in the fire. One of those irons is helping in your village and making sure things are working well. 

"But, with Brexit, we were tipped out of being fully-fledged EU citizens with no extra rights other than those in the Withdrawal Agreement, which was reasonably well done,  but not enough."

“It’s only with loss of those rights that you realise how precious they are. Since Brexit, I’ve not been as involved with village politics and people as much and have withdrawn into my shell. Now I feel at home again.”