In the course of the month of September, the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) has updated the national rules for the forthcoming European elections of May 2019. According to this latest overview, the European landscape is still extremely varied.
This is partly shown in the date on which elections are held. The Netherlands will be the first to open the polls on 23 May, followed by Malta on 25 May. Many member states will follow the next day (Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Austria, Romania, Finland and Sweden). As for the rest of the member states, the actual date on which the elections will be held has not yet been confirmed. It is worth noting that voting is compulsory in Belgium, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Greece and Cyprus.
The electoral threshold also varies enormously. Most member states do not have one; hence, no minimum threshold has been set in Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark and Germany (where it was declared anti-constitutional by the German Constitutional Court in 2014), Estonia, Ireland, Spain, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Finland. Cyprus has opted for a threshold of 1.8%, Greece for 3%. In Italy, Austria and Sweden, the threshold has been set at 4%, and 5% in all other member states that have one.
The constituencies will be national in the vast majority of cases, apart from Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Portugal, which have divided their territory into a number of constituencies. The French government decided to return to a national constituency at the very beginning of 2018, although some 60 French MPs appealed to the Constitutional Council against this decision in May.
The vast majority of nationals living in a member state other than their own may vote from abroad, with the exception of the Irish, Maltese and Slovakians. There are many different methods for voting, including voting at one's embassy or consulate, a postal vote, a proxy vote or online voting. According to the EPRS data, the last of these options is currently possible only in Estonia.
Voting age is 18 everywhere in the EU but Austria, where it is 16. The minimum age to stand for election fluctuates greatly between member states, ranging from 18 (Denmark, Germany, Spain, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden) to 25 (Greece and Italy). Romania has set the minimum age at 23, whilst Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia and Cyprus have decided on 21.
Differences in voting methods do not appear to have been covered in this latest EPRS report, but are expected still to be very similar to those observed in the 2014 elections. For instance, for the last European elections, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary and Romania opted for closed lists. The Benelux countries, Italy, Denmark, all of the Scandinavian, Baltic and Eastern European member states, Bulgaria and Greece went for preferential voting. Ireland, applying a single transferable vote, was the only exception.
It is worth noting that with the departure of the United Kingdom, the total number of MEPs falls from 751 to 705 and the number of MEPs sent by each member state will differ from the 2014 elections (see EUROPE 12040). 27 of the 73 seats that will be left vacant when the UK leaves the EU will be reallocated as follows: +5 seats for France (or 79) and Spain (59), +3 seats for Italy (76) and the Netherlands (29), +2 for Ireland (13) and +1 seat for Poland (52), Romania (33), Sweden (21), Austria (19), Denmark (14), Finland (14), Slovakia (14), Croatia (12) and Estonia (7). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)