Second Country EU Citizens Voting in National Elections Is an Important Step, but Other Steps Should Be Taken First Ángel Rodríguez History demonstrates that the extension of participation rights is a process. Not only is this true for national populations, who only gained universal suffrage after a struggle in which the percentage of those entitled to this right was growing over many years before reaching universal inclusion. It is also true for voting rights of non-nationals, rights which were extended to foreign residents only step by step, first to a selected group (for instance, those coming from former colonies) which was later on enlarged; or first to those who complied with conditions (for example, years of residence) which were subsequently lightened; or which included first merely the right to vote and only later the right to be stand as a candidate, etc. Similar processes can be observed with regard to the type of election in which non-nationals have been entitled to participate. From this perspective, granting the right to vote in national elections for second country EU citizens is certainly a test on the bonds of solidarity among EU citizens, as Jo Shaw put it. But it also poses the question of whether, after twenty years of recognition in the EU of the right to vote and be elected for a selected group of non-nationals (European citizens) in selected elections (local and European ones), time has come to include also the right to vote at the national level. In my opinion, we could be still missing some steps that should not be skipped before trying to reach that objective; steps that are of a practical as well as a legal nature. First of all, if we think that voting in local and EP elections are not the only participation rights we would like to see associated with European citizenship, and if, therefore, the idea is to go further, then the next step should be regional elections, rather than moving on directly to national ones. Certainly, regional elections do not play the same role in all member states, and there are some in which they do not even exist. But they are, nevertheless, quite relevant in those states with a federal or quasi federal territorial organisation. In some of them domestic law actually permits, in one way or another, the participation of foreign residents, so a future EU legislation © The Author(s) 2019 R. Bauböck (ed.), Debating European Citizenship, IMISCOE Research Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89905-3_14 69