{"id":141706,"date":"2025-05-29T15:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T15:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/141706\/"},"modified":"2025-05-29T15:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T15:18:11","slug":"british-expat-wins-french-court-battle-to-restore-pre-brexit-right-that-could-open-floodgates-for-brits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/141706\/","title":{"rendered":"British expat WINS French court battle to restore pre-Brexit right that could open floodgates for Brits"},"content":{"rendered":"

By SOPHIA STANFORD<\/a> <\/p>\n

Published: 10:57 EDT, 29 May 2025 | Updated: 11:09 EDT, 29 May 2025 <\/p>\n

A British woman living in France<\/a> is overjoyed to have her voting rights restored in a move that could shake up post-Brexit rules.<\/p>\n

Alice Bouilliez said she was ‘extremely surprised’ that a court in Auch, south-west France, ruled she would be able to vote in local elections<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experts now believe the shock ruling could set a precedent for all Brits who had permanent resident status in the European country before the referendum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms Bouilliez, who has lived in France for nearly four decades, was able to vote before the Brexit<\/a> deal went through in 2020 but it was not made clear what her rights would be afterwards.<\/p>\n

Despite having residency and being married to a Frenchman, Ms Bouillez never became a citizen – in part down to her oath she took to the British Crown while working as a civil servant in the Foreign Office.<\/p>\n

The retiree, alongside several other disgruntled Brits, eventually took the case\u00a0to the European court of justice in 2022 after years of legal battles, although they ruled against her.<\/p>\n

Their argument, based on the advice of advocate general Anthony Collins, was that ‘nationality of a member state’ was an ‘essential condition of a person to be able to acquire and retain the status of citizens of the union and to benefit fully from the rights attaching to that status’.<\/p>\n

Her being stripped of her voting rights was ‘an automatic consequence of the sole sovereign decision taken by the United Kingdom to withdraw from the European Union’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Former <\/p>\n

Former civil servant Alice Bouillez\u00a0said she was ‘extremely surprised’ that a court in Auch, south-west France, ruled she would be able to vote in local elections\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Ms Bouillez’s lawyer argued that the court could not disenfranchise those who already had the rights protected under the EU treaty before Brexit – an argument that proved true.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘The court ruled that Alice had not committed any crime and that to lose her voting rights was a fundamental and disproportionate infringement of her voting rights,’\u00a0Julien Fouchet said after today’s ruling.<\/p>\n

‘The right to vote is a common good, it is more than just a right,’ he was reported saying in The Guardian.<\/p>\n

An ‘extremely happy’ Ms Bouillez said ‘when I went to get the ruling from the court I was extremely surprised because I was expecting a knock on the knuckles’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The barrister added that this ruling could now restore the rights of Brits on the continent if they wanted their name on the\u00a0electoral register for local elections.<\/p>\n

He said: ‘The French and UK governments should have a bilateral treaty reciprocating the right to vote in municipal elections.<\/p>\n

‘I see this judgment as an opportunity, especially in light of the recent UK-EU summit, to get an agreement on this.’<\/p>\n

Before the Brexit referendum, Brits living in France could vote in\u00a0municipal and European parliamentary elections but not in national, presidential or legislative elections.<\/p>\n

\"Experts <\/p>\n

Experts now believe the shock ruling could set a precedent for all Brits who had permanent resident status in the European country before the referendum to be able to vote<\/p>\n

This was generally the same rules across most European countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Europeans also had these same rights living in the UK but most countries – apart from\u00a0Ireland, Cyprus and Malta – are now unable to vote here.<\/p>\n

The British government had tried to make reciprocal voting rights part of the Brexit deal but the EU insisted on having bilateral treaties instead.<\/p>\n

And in 2018, the House of Commons passed a motion which insisted British nationals who have an EU citizenship<\/a> should have ‘the range of rights and protections afforded to individuals as European Union citizens are integral to a person\u2019s European identity’.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Foreign Office has been contacted for comment, as well as the\u00a0Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government.<\/p>\n

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\n British expat WINS French court battle to restore pre-Brexit right that could open floodgates for Brits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By SOPHIA STANFORD Published: 10:57 EDT, 29 May 2025 | Updated: 11:09 EDT, 29 May 2025 A British…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,92,2000,299,5187,1699,36,4884,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-141706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-dailymail","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european","14":"tag-european-union","15":"tag-france","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114591793573287675","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}