Votes at 16: what Austria, Germany and Belgium show, and whether Spain should follow

The first problem Miriam González named when she launched Democracia 21 was that young people have come to loathe the parties and some have started to doubt democracy. We looked at the data behind that claim a fortnight ago, and they mostly bear it out. One answer keeps coming up across Europe, and it starts with a simple question: should 16-year-olds vote?

Four countries make the case concrete.

Austria, the long experiment

Austria was the first European country to lower the general voting age to 16, in 2007, for national, presidential and European elections; Vienna had already done it for its own elections in 2005. That gives Europe nearly twenty years of evidence.

The best-known worry is that 16-year-olds won't turn up. Eva Zeglovits and Julian Aichholzer checked the official electoral lists. In Vienna's 2010 election, 64.2% of 16- and 17-year-olds voted, against 56.3% of first-time voters aged 18 to 20 and 67.6% of the whole electorate. In the town of Krems in 2012 the pattern repeated: 56.3% of the youngest voters, 46.3% of 18- to 20-year-olds, 62.6% overall. Young people still vote less than their parents, but those who get the vote at 16 use it more than those who get it at 18, and the authors find the boost for first-time voters even stronger among the youngest.

The second worry is that their choices are uninformed. Markus Wagner, David Johann and Sylvia Kritzinger tested it before the 2009 European election and found that the quality of under-18s' vote choices, how well their vote matched their own views, was similar to that of older voters. Where under-18s said they were less likely to vote, the authors found that this was not explained by lower ability or motivation.

Germany and Belgium, the 2024 wave

Germany moved in stages. The Bundestag decided in 2022 to lower the voting age for European elections, and the European election of 9 June 2024 was the first nationwide vote open to 16-year-olds; the federal returning officer counted about 1.4 million 16- and 17-year-olds eligible. Bundestag elections stay at 18, while several German states let 16-year-olds vote in their own elections.

Belgium's route was messier and more instructive. A law of December 2023 let 16- and 17-year-olds vote in the 2024 European elections without obliging them to, while voting is compulsory for adults. On 21 March 2024, VRT reported, the Constitutional Court suspended that distinction, finding it unjustified. The young voters became subject to compulsory voting like everyone else, and the government then announced that minors who didn't vote would not be prosecuted. Belgium learned in public that if you widen the franchise, you have to decide whether the new voters carry the same duties as the old ones.

Spain stays at 18

Spain's electoral law gives the vote, in Article 2, to Spaniards who have come of age, which is 18. In April 2025 ERC filed a bill to change that wording to "over sixteen". Its preamble cites Austria and the Council of Europe, notes that at 16 a person can work, pay taxes and make a will, and says the Spanish Youth Council supports the change. The PP has argued it clashes with the Constitution. Public opinion is firmly against for now: in the CIS barometer of May 2025, 79.3% of Spaniards disagreed with lowering the voting age to 16, and 18.4% agreed.

That gap matters. A change to who votes should not pass on a narrow majority against the wishes of four in five citizens. It needs evidence and a careful design that can win people over.

A radical-centre answer

Albert Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, which we explained here, is the useful lens. When an organisation declines, people either leave or speak up, and voice is costlier: it depends on believing you can make a difference. Young Spaniards have plenty of exits available, from abstention to emigration. The vote at 16 offers voice at the moment it is cheapest to learn, while people are still at school and living at home, which fits the Austrian finding that the first-vote boost is strongest among the youngest.

Each political tradition gets something here. The left is right that widening the franchise gives young people a say on pensions, housing and climate, decisions an ageing electorate otherwise takes without them. The right and the liberal tradition are right that rights and responsibilities go together: those who can work and pay taxes at 16 have a claim to representation, and the vote is a civic duty to learn as well as a right to use. The idea that belongs to neither is Hirschman's voice built as a habit, introduced in stages and measured.

So our proposal has three parts. First, lower the voting age to 16 for municipal and European elections, with automatic registration; European elections are where Germany and Belgium began. Second, give every 15- and 16-year-old a short, practical civic course in school before their first election: how the ballot works, how to read a manifesto, how the council spends its budget. Third, publish turnout and survey results by age after each election, and decide on regional and general elections only once Spain has its own numbers.

That design answers the people who doubt it with data and gives the young people who doubt democracy an early reason to use their voice.