What does this thing do besides leeching off taxpayers' money?
There are 442
conseillers des Français de l'Étranger (formerly consular councillors) elected, plus 68 consular delegates elected in electoral constituencies made up of one or more consular constituencies (some constituencies include more than one countries, some countries have more than one constituency. Each constituency elects between one and nine consular councillors based on the number of citizens on the expats register. The consular delegates are elected in some constituencies to correct population disparities, with one delegate for every 10,000 registered voter in excess of 10,000.
Consular councillors were created in 2013 and first elected in 2014. This year's election was supposed to have been held in 2020 but was delayed by one year because of the pandemic. They sit in the consular council(s) in their constituency, with each embassy or consulate having a consular council. Consular councillors are supposed to represent French citizens abroad to these embassies and consulate, mostly by answering all questions regarding education, employment, pensions etc. Consular councils are supposed to formulate recommendations and opinions on matters of interest. I am not sure what that is actually supposed to mean.
Among the consular councillors, 90 of them will be elected to serve in the
Assemblée des Français de l'étranger (AFE), a consultative body first created in 1948.
Consular councillors receive a flat-rate allowance twice a year. Members of the AFE also get their travel and accommodation expenses reimbursed. The
flat-rate allowance varies based on the constituency: in London it's about €1,900, for example.
More relevantly, consular councillors and consular delegates - along with expat deputies and expat senators - make up the electoral college which elects the 12 expat senators, renewed by halves every three seats. The 6 expat seats which were to be elected in 2020 will now be elected this fall. None other than Ségolène Royal will be running with a 'citizen list that transcends the right/left divide' in the senatorial election. I'm excited.
The size of the electorate is 1,685,638. The size of the electoral constituencies vary wildly: Switzerland-2 (Geneva) has 145,329 voters, UK-2 (London) has 137,916, Belgium has 109,885. On the other hand, Paraguay has 864, Ukraine has 857, the CAR has 753 and a lot of constituencies have less than 2,000.
In 2014, turnout was 16.6% - about 185,000 people voted.
The elections seem to be quite partisan and align on French partisan lines. Going through the
list of candidates, you find a lot of lists with labels indicating some partisan affiliation (LREM, Agir, right, EELV etc.). Other lists claim to be independent and apolitical, and some lists have clearly niche interests. For example, the Montreal constituency has a students' list which demands the return of the preferential tuition fees for French students in Quebec universities (good luck with that, kids).
I've personally hardly ever heard of these things, and have no real idea (or interest) in what they do, although I certainly do get a bunch of emails from them (to the point where it is confusing who is who and whether or not they are elected to something). But they don't really cater to people like me, I imagine their target audience are expats who shouldn't be expats because they just want to live like they did in France. Because they have internet voting and because I am stuck in perpetual lockdown, I will vote for fun.
The lists have their flyers and ballots here:
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/services-aux-francais/voter-a-l-etranger/elections-des-conseillers-des-francais-de-l-etranger-et-des-delegues/consulter-les-circulaires-des-candidats-et-ou-voter-par-internet/
