Comparing apples and pears
Only 15% of EU citizens living in Luxembourg have signed up to vote in the European election. The share of non-Luxembourgish EU citizens registering as voters has only increased slowly over the past decades. In international statistics however, Luxembourg appears to be performing incredibly in terms of voter turnout.
Data from the European Parliament masks one non-neglectable reality: voting is mandatory for Luxembourg citizens. Those who don’t vote risk being fined. The plain figures don’t take different voting rules into account, making Luxembourgers look like real democracy-lovers.
In the 2019 European Parliament election, Belgium was the only country with a higher turnout (88.5%) than Luxembourg (84.2%), also due to mandatory voting. This sense of duty, however, doesn’t seem to apply everywhere in Europe. Voting is also mandatory for people in Bulgaria, Cyprus, where the turnout was below the EU average anyway, and in Greece.