Mobile Union Citizens Should Have Portable Voting Rights Within the EU 83 a lot of time. And, second, even if this happens nationality policies alone would not enfranchise Union citizens with political rights. At best, it would bring stronger incentives for this group of people to acquire citizenship and, with it, voting rights. What this means is that the democratic deficit would persist until all Union citizens naturalise. This process might again take many decades because the decision to naturalise is ultimately an individual and personal one. Furthermore, judging from the low naturalisation rate amongst Union citizens, this moment might not arrive ever for the first generation of Union citizens. A common EU directive granting Union citizens such rights directly achieves more and faster than naturalisation. Once implemented, this directive would automatically and simultaneously enfranchise all Union citizens. Secondly, most contributions in this forum have presented enfranchisement by naturalisation and by voting rights as mutually exclusive alternatives. In fact, the two options tend to go hand in hand with each other. For instance, those member states that have a more open access to citizenship also give long-term residents the right to vote in local elections (the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands as opposed to Spain, Italy, Greece and most new EU member states). Thirdly, given that these are Union citizens we are talking about, it seems to me disproportionate to ask them to naturalise, and often also to renounce their original citizenship, in order to gain political rights. It is disproportionate for non-EU migrants but even more so for Union citizens. Why that? Is there anything special about Union citizens who live in the European Union? Are they different from other foreign nationals living in a country other than their own somewhere else on the globe? I believe the answer to this question is yes. Member states and their citizens are partners in a shared European project with a common market, common economy and freedom of movement. Because of the specificity of the situation, alternative ways of political inclusion are preferable to naturalisation. In addition, supporters of enfranchisement through naturalisation should also consider that by becoming a citizen in the country of residence a naturalised Union citizen would lose some of the substantive EU rights which she would otherwise enjoy as a Union citizen who resides in another ­member state. A naturalised Union citizen would thus be less a Union citizen than a new national citizen.