Five Pragmatic Reasons for a Dialogue with and Between Member States… 53 elections were agreed because this issue was one minor point in a large package of changes contained in the Maastricht Treaty. Presenting the extension of voting rights to the national level as an isolated issue to be realised by binding Union law probably will create a lot of opposition and negative publicity for the Union generally. (5) This proposal will certainly raise the issue of extending voting rights to the national level for long-term resident third-country nationals. Why would a Polish or Portuguese national be allowed to participate in national elections after ten weeks or months of residence in France and a Swiss or a Turkish national be excluded even after ten years of lawful residence in that country? My first conclusion is: Do not raise this issue in isolation but together with other relevant issues concerning political rights of EU migrants, such as voting rights in national elections for expatriates living in another member state, the right of Union citizens to be a member of or establish a political party in the member state where he lives and the possibility of facilitated naturalisation after having acquired the permanent resident right in another member state (after a minimum of five years of residence). My second conclusion is: Do not propose binding Union law on this issue or try to make the Court of Justice impose a binding solution for this problem. Rather apply the open method of coordination by starting a structured dialogue with and between member states, possibly combined with the issue of the limits set by free movement law to nationality legislation of member states. We may learn from the experience of the Nordic Union in dealing with the issue of extending voting rights to non-citizen residents, both of the Nordic countries and other countries, during the 1970s and 1980s by structured discussions rather than imposing a common rule from above. With this in mind I would support the fifth option in David Owen’s contribution to this debate. Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the ­chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.