Poland in the EU

Poles living in other EU countries prefer to vote for local candidates for the European Parliament rather then Polish ones.

I have come to this interesting conclusion after looking at data from a number of consulates. Polish people abroad can register in consulates and vote for Warsaw candidates. But almost none have. In London and all of south England: 700 people, in Ireland 500, in Berlin and around 600, in Paris 1,000, in the Netherlands 287. Even in Belgium where the European institutions are it's just 1831. This is nothing compared to the last Polish election in 2007, when for example in Ireland there were 22,000 Polish people registered and 15,000 actually voted.

Many Poles, as others, will of course not vote at all. But it seems a sizeable number have chosen to vote for local candidates. In the UK a group of Poles have been running a "Be a POLISHed citizen" campaign to convince their compatriots to vote locally. Although there are no data for the whole country, both they themselves and Polish diplomats believe they have been very effective.

In Ireland there are local elections at the same time, in which a dozen or so Polish candidates are running.

Belgium is the only country for which I found the number of registered Polish voters for the whole country: 1357. This is of course nothing compared to the number of Poles living in the country, but almost as much as will be voting in Polish consulates. The fact that the Ecolo have fielded a Polish candidate, Bartosz Lech, certainly helped. But I do see a trend here, especially in the UK and Ireland. Looks like the Poles are settling and starting to consider these places home.