66 D. Kostakopoulou meaningful relations that surround the life of EU citizens are not merely embodied in space; they also unfold in time. Domestic political domains thus need to acknowledge that a new predicament brings about a receding past, decaying relations and entanglements in the light of new experiences, a new sense of worldliness, new entanglements, new personal journeys, new meaningful relations, new events and new political exigencies requiring responses. The temporal movement characterising settlement in a new environment is not only a process, but is also a variation, that is, change. Accordingly, democratic public spheres must be open to new participants and should be engagement promoters. Similarly, European Union institutions cannot afford to disregard this temporal movement, for they have been instrumental in lifting EU citizens from the imaginary of rooted publics and imparting onto them a sense of freedom and the consciousness of being treated with dignity and equality wherever they go in the territory of the Union. After all, this is what European integration was hoped to be able to accomplish since its early stages. Arguably, it would be a fundamental contradiction, if, one the one hand, EU citizens were encouraged to move, cultivate new allegiances, form new orientations, have a European consciousness, create new realities, to be part of the fabric of the host societies and be treated as equal collaborators and participants, while European institutions, including the Council of the EU, refused to accept the full consequences, which include that EU citizens would feel themselves as active collaborators and participants in society and politics, on the other. Shutting the gate of political participation in national elections and frustrating the legitimate democratic aspirations of all those who for one reason or another partook of the European project and became valued members of the community of their residence would be tantamount to condemning one of the biggest achievements of the European integration project and making the proclamation to encourage participation in the democratic life of the Union empty rhetoric.  egal norms should reflect social practices and EU citizens’ L lived encounters Legal norms cannot afford to disregard both principles and social practices. If they do, they will eventually lose credibility. The partial franchise of EU citizens is clearly not adequate. Nor does it provide a frank solution for the future. Its extension to national parliamentary elections is thus necessary and this can only be done by resisting the temptation to shut ourselves up in the present and apply the ‘available’, that is, some stretching or opening up