There is soon to be a referendum when the people of Luxembourg will be asked to decide whether foreigners should be given the right to vote in elections to the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies. Against this background, a conference entitled “A new horizon for democracy? Voting rights for foreigners in national elections” is being organised on March 20 and 21 at the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies by the University of Luxembourg’s Research Chair in Parliamentary Studies.

This event will bring together leading specialists in this area from all over Europe so that they can discuss all the theoretical and practical questions to do with voting rights for foreigners from a legal, philosophical and political perspective, and contrast and compare viewpoints and practice in various countries.

“The paradigm shift being considered in Luxembourg is all the more remarkable given that the number of foreign residents is now bordering on 50% of the population”, underlined Dr Philippe Poirier, who holds the post of Research Chair in Parliamentary Studies from the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies at the Faculty of Language and Literature at the University of Luxembourg. He is co-organising this conference with Professor Luc Heuschling of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance.

University president Rainer Klump will give an introduction, then Mars Di Bartolomeo, President of the Chamber of Deputies, and Claude Frieseisen, Secretary General of the Chamber of Deputies, sociologists, historians, philosophers and law and politics researchers from all over Europe will debate the issues during three sessions entitled:

• The traditional response and discourse about legitimacy;
• Exploring transnational communities of citizens: based on which normative criteria?;
• Comparing and evaluating new forms of political citizenship.

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Conferences will be taking place on 20 and 21 March 2015 in the plenary hall at the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies, 23 rue du Marché-aux-Herbes, L-1728 Luxembourg. The sessions will be held in French and English; simultaneous translation into English will be provided.

Full programme

Information and compulsory registration only by e-mail: demos@uni.lu.

The conference proceedings will be published by Larcier in its Parliamentary Studies collection during the 2015-2016 winter period.