2024 European Parliament elections

The time has come. This week, citizens of European Union go to polls to vote in European Parliament elections. These are the second-largest democratic elections in the world, with 390 million eligible voters, behind 🇮🇳 India (970M), and above 🇺🇸 United States (235M), 🇮🇩 Indonesia (205M) and 🇵🇰 Pakistan (129M).

European Parliament is unicameral and will consist (after these elections) of 720 members (MEPs; 361 needed for majority), who are elected for a five-year term, in a mixed voting system, as each country has rules of its own. Read more here. Few things worth knowing, or interesting:

• Election takes four days, as it already finished in 🇳🇱 Netherlands (which voted on Thursday 6th) and 🇮🇪 Ireland (Friday 7th). Few countries (Czechia, Latvia, Malta and Slovakia) vote on Friday-Saturday or Saturday only. However, overwhelming majority of countries (and people) will cast their votes on Sunday 9th.

• Voting (in general, not only to the EP) is compulsory in five countries: 🇧🇪 Belgium, 🇧🇬 Bulgaria, 🇨🇾 Cyprus, 🇬🇷 Greece and 🇱🇺 Luxembourg (albeit enforcement varies). Coincidentally, first two also hold national elections this Sunday – links to dedicated threads (if not stickied) will be linked below this post.

• Majority of countries use proportional voting systems (D'Hondt, largest remainder or Sainte-Laguë), two outliers are 🇮🇪 Ireland and 🇲🇹 Malta, which both use STV.

• Largest number of MEPs will be elected in 🇩🇪 Germany (96), 🇫🇷 France (81), 🇮🇹 Italy (76), 🇪🇸 Spain (61) and 🇵🇱 Poland (53). Lower end consists of 🇨🇾 Cyprus, 🇱🇺 Luxembourg and 🇲🇹 Malta, who elect 6 MEPs each.

• Nearly all (23 of 27) countries vote as single constituency. 🇧🇪 Belgium and 🇮🇪 Ireland vote in three constituencies each, 🇮🇹 Italy in five, and major weirdo here is 🇵🇱 Poland, divided into 13 districts.

Turnout in last (2019) elections was 50.7%.

What can be a little confusing, is that while voters generally vote on candidates of various national parties, MEPs eventually are divided between various EP groups, which are usually based on one, two or more European parties, gathering respective national ones. Since 2014 elections, these European parties nominate their candidates to the office of European Commission president, who are commonly known as (from German) Spitzenkandidat.

Relevant EP groups (European parties), present or expected to appear in the parliament, are:

Further reading

Wikipedia