Abstract
Traditionally, political rights are an important component of the relationship between the state and its citizen, and therefore only citizens are entitled to bear them. Nevertheless, due to the international migration this approach is a subject to change and nowadays many countries give voting rights also to foreigners who are resident there.
The attitude of the Czech Republic is conservative so far, which means that only the minimum standard enacted by European law is provided. However, the preparatory works on new electoral code have given rise to a discussion on possible enlargements of the voting right also on third countries foreigners resident in the country.
This article tries to enhance the discussion in three ways. The first part consists in an analysis what is the potential percentage of foreign voters, taking into consideration their geographic distribution to particular municipalities and thus giving an estimate of their influence on local councils.
According to the results potential foreign voters form relevant minority only in 11 out of 6251 municipalities. The second part is focused on the actual exercise of voting right by European citizens resident in the Czech Republic who have it already.
The representative survey made on a sample of 5 % municipalities shows that the turnout of these voters is negligible (approx. 2.4 %), much below the average of the EU. The last part of the article deals with the legislation in this area and points out crucial obstacles to real exercise of political rights of foreigners and its conflict with requirements from the European law.