Bulgarians in Germany to vote for European parliament for the first time in 21 cities
04 May 2019 News
BERLIN. – Owing to the efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and our Embassy in Berlin, for the first time Bulgarian nationals residing in Germany will be able to vote in 13 additional polling stations for the Bulgarian candidates in the European parliamentary elections on May 26, after the federal authorities granted the request of the Bulgarian government to open more stations.
These will operate in addition to the existing polling stations at the three diplomatic and consular missions in Germany and the five offices of our honorary consuls there. Thus at the forthcoming EP elections Bulgarian expats willing to exercise their voting rights in Germany by electing Bulgarian members of the European Parliament will be able to do so in a total of 21 cities.
In the capital Berlin, Bulgarians will be able to cast their votes at the Embassy, using the entrance from Leipzigerstraße 19. Our consular missions in Munich and Frankfurt am Mein will open polling stations at their addresses, Walhallstraße 7 and Eckenheimer Landstraße 101 respectively. In Hamburg, Bulgarians will be able to vote at the office of our honorary consul on Alstertor 15. In Darmstadt, the polling station will be at the address of the honorary consulate, Hilpertstraße 3, and in Magdeburg, at Haeckelstraße 9. Polling stations will also be set up at the honorary consulates of Bulgaria in Münster, at Bismarckallee 1 (the Chamber of Commerce), and in Stuttgart, at Moerickerstraße 11. All stations will be open for voting from 7 a.m. till 8 p.p. on May 26.
Apart from that, the Bulgarian government will set up polling stations in the cities of Aachen, Bremen, Cologne, Dortmund, Dresden, Erfurt, Freiburg, Hannover, Karlsruhe, Konstanz, Leipzig, Nuremberg and Regensburg. They will be stay open from 7 a.m. till 8 p.m. on May 26, and their exact addresses will be announced in due course on the website of the MFA. Bulgarians who will be voting in Konstanz should know that there will be no parking facilities in the vicinity of the polling station in that city.
The setting up of additional polling stations will make it easy for Bulgarians permanently residing in Germany to make their choice where to exercise their voting rights. Thus far, the German federal authorities have made similar exceptions for Bulgarian elections in 2014 and 2015 by allowing for extra polling stations to be set up, in both cases, in nine cities.
Every Bulgarian national who has a current address in Germany will be able to vote in any one of the 21 cities listed above, so long as they have not exercised their voting rights on the same day in Bulgaria, and vice versa: no Bulgarian national who has voted for European Parliament in Germany will be allowed to cast a second vote in Bulgaria.
Any political activities on the part of Bulgarian nationals in the Federal Republic of Germany will be allowed solely in accordance with the provisions of, and within the limits prescribed by, the current German law.