The transborder elections in central Europe opportunities for voting abroad and the political integration of immigrants

Abstract

This paper focuses on the electoral issues relating to modern international migration. The main topics of paper are the political electoral integration of immigrants in the Central European countries and also the opportunities for voting abroad. Voting from abroad is very important possibility for the citizens living abroad and for other expatriots. The Czech, Slovak and Polish political experience in this field is relatively long, but for Hungary it is new problem which has only existed for a couple of years. At present, all Central European countries allow their citizens living abroad to vote in parliamentary elections in some form or another, while some of them also permit voting in direct presidential elections. There are two models regarding to the political integration of immigrants: The more liberal model, which is typical for Hungary and Slovakia and more restrictive Czech and Polish model. Hungary and Slovakia permit the electoral participation on the local and regional level not only for the EU citizens living there, but for the third countries nationals too. The Czech Republic and Poland have opened their local electoral level only for the EU citizens.