74 S. Collard another, would be constantly going back to square one. The idea of voting rights based on residence is less straightforward than it might appear. My second question relates to the situation of EU citizens who migrate to non-EU countries of which they are not nationals: if national voting rights were guaranteed for EU citizens resident in other Member-States on the grounds that they should not be disenfranchised, would it then be acceptable for other EU citizens to lose their voting rights if they choose to migrate to a non-EU country, such as British citizens settling in the USA? Would this be their punishment for leaving the haven of the EU? My third question is about third country nationals (TCNs), who are far more numerous than second country nationals (SCNs), as Wilhelm has pointed out: several contributors have made the point that legislation at EU level would be impossible, and that the diversity of Member-States’ political and historical circumstances should in any case be respected, yet clearly the link between these two categories of migrants is fundamental to the EU’s perception of itself as inclusive or exclusive. There are strong arguments in favour of giving voting rights at local elections to long term TCNs, as many Member-States already do, but this should not be at the price of increased xenophobic reactions. The dilemma is well illustrated by the French case: François Mitterrand’s campaign manifesto in 1981 included a pledge to give the right to vote in local elections to all foreigners, but the opposition it aroused, articulated indirectly through the rise of the National Front, meant that this was never implemented. Indeed, France was one of the countries that for various reasons put up strongest resistance in the Maastricht debate to the voting rights enshrined in European Citizenship, but largely because many feared it would be the thin end of the wedge, opening the door to the same rights for TCNs. In spite of the electoral success of the National Front in the presidential elections, Socialist President François Hollande has indeed pledged to do just this, and we should watch closely to see if his government has the courage and political support in the new National Assembly to go through with it, in the face of claims by the mainstream Right as well as the National Front, of an implied ‘drift towards communitarianism’ and the spectre of Muslim-dominated local councils organising women only swimming sessions and banning all pork products from school canteens. The false premise on which this scaremongering is predicated (many Muslims already have French nationality and therefore the right to vote at all elections) is all the more unjustified when one considers the low