I voted previously in another commune, where I only needed to register once, and voted in two European elections and two municipal. Having moved here I registered to vote and did so in last year's municipal. Now I'm told there are two sparate lists of EU citizens, one for the municipal, one for the European, and I (and about ten others) are on one and not the other.

So I had an argument with the mayor, but it's the law and there's no changing it. Of course, the town hall clerk who registered me did not inform me that I needed to register a second time for the European election.

I've since checked the elections pages of the Interior Ministry site, and sure enough the information is there - for those who know how to Google it. It says there are two separate lists, and inscription in the one does not entail inscription in the other. There are even two different downloadable forms to fill in, identical except for the heading (one says Municipal, the other European, duh, and one is printed in red, the other in green...). The laws referred to are separate, one for the European elections, the other for the municipal. These laws institute a separate ("complementary") list for non-French EU citizens, but do not stipulate that there must be two lists, one for each type of election. That must have been a brilliant administrative decision at some point.

It is beyond me to understand what useful purpose is served by this complication. We have political personnel wringing their hands about low participation, and motivated European citizens deprived of their vote by administrative barriers that have no sensible justification.

Administrative complication + absence of information = discrimination.