The European elections will take place in May this year, most likely on Friday 24th here in Ireland. I am writing with some information that maybe helpful to you, and may also be of interest to Lithuanians living in Ireland.
First of all, as you may have seen, we are running a campaign to encourage people to pledge to vote by signing up to our website:www.thistimeimvoting.eu The website also allows citizens to send emails to their friends, family and so on to encourage them, in turn, to pledge to vote. As such, it may be of particular interest/utility to expat communities in Ireland who wish to promote electoral participation amongst their members. I should stress that it is completely non-partisan and promotes only the notion of voting, not, of course, voting for any particular party or candidate.
Secondly, the European Parliament has produced a new website to help illustrate the practical ways in which the EU makes a difference to people’s everyday lives: www.what-europe-does-for-me.eu It is easy to navigate yet contains nearly 2000 easy-to-read, short notes with specific information about what Europe does for someone’s region, their profession or their favourite pastime.
Thirdly, we also have a section of our website dedicated to the practicalities of the election: https://www.european-elections.eu/which is designed to help people find all relevant information they need in one place, including: step-by-step to cast your vote; national voting rules for in a Q&A format, how to register as a permanent resident in another EU country or how to vote from abroad.
Here is Ireland we are producing leaflets bespoke to each of Ireland’s 26 counties grouping the key elements of the above information, and these will be freely available from our Office. In addition, all the information can be accessed on a mobile device via our new Citizen’s App, which is available for free from the App Store and Google Play.
