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EUROPEAN UNION

EXPLAINED: What’s at stake in the European parliamentary elections?

The 2024 European elections take place around Europe from June 6th to June 9th but how do they work and what does the European parliament actually do and how does it work?

Published: 29 March 2024 16:35 CET
Updated: 31 March 2024 09:22 CEST
EXPLAINED: What's at stake in the European parliamentary elections?
A view of the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, in December 2023. Photo by FREDERICK FLORIN / AFP

The European Parliament is one of the largest elected bodies in the world – with 705 members.

With over 450 million people living in the EU, only India’s Parliament represents more people globally.

Plenty of hot button issues – like national defence and healthcare – are still largely decided by national parliaments. That’s likely to remain so, but the European Parliament has power to act in a few key areas.  

It scrutinises all laws the EU’s executive – or the European Commission – proposes and it can also request legislation. Plenty of recent high-profile EU laws have come at its insistence. These include the end of roaming charges in the EU and GDPR, which now sets data privacy standards around the globe.

Besides regulations on tech and artificial intelligence, expect MEPs to be debating a lot of legislation around consumer protection, food safety, certain action on climate change and transition like the European Green Deal, trade deals, as well as Europe’s support for Ukraine and whether it will eventually be a member of the EU.

European election results will also have some influence over whether Ursula von der Leyen – the first woman ever to be European Commission President and from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) – gets another term.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The 2024 European elections will influence whether she gets another term in the EU’s top job. Photo: AP Photo/Jean-Francois Badias

READ ALSO: Who is Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen, the surprise candidate to take the EU’s top job?

So do MEPs represent their country in the European Parliament?

Technically, they’re not supposed to. MEPs are mandated to act in what they see as the interest of wider Europe – even if that conflicts with the interests of their own country. MEPs are still chosen in election contests that are run nationally though.

Every five years since 1979, voters around the European Union vote for 705 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in Brussels and Strasbourg. Each country gets a number of MEPs roughly proportional to its population. With Germany being the EU’s most populous country, it gets the most, with 96 seats.  

However, MEPs don’t sit in the European Parliament based on country as they aren’t supposed to act in purely national interests – but looking at what they see as the interest of all of Europe. They sit in the European Parliament based on party group. So a Green from Germany and a Green from France will sit together. That German Green also won’t be sitting with the German Christian Democrats – who themselves will sit on the other side of the chamber with parties like Ireland’s Fine Gael – a fellow centre-right party.

European parliamentarians say they do that to encourage you to vote in a European way – considering the issues you think will impact all of Europe – rather than treat the European elections as a referendum on your own national government – which studies show often happens.

How are the elections expected to go?

Some countries – most notably Germany – report a strong lead for a mainstream party. In Germany’s case, that party is the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), of which current European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is a member. The populist far-right AfD, meanwhile, trails by comparison.

‘Wake-up call’: Far-right parties set to make huge gains in 2024 EU election

The same cannot be said for the populist right elsewhere in Europe, where polls everywhere from Austria to Sweden to France and the Netherlands show right-wing parties having the potential to make some big gains over their 2019 results.

At the same time, more centrist European political parties on the centre-left and centre-right are still likely to be able to keep a majority in the European Parliament according to the latest polls.

Elections to borders: 7 big changes in the EU that will impact you this year

Who gets to vote?

If you are a citizen of the European Union – whether German, Irish, French, Italian, Spanish, etc. – you can vote in the European elections.

It’s important to note here that you don’t necessarily vote where you are from but instead vote from wherever you live in the EU. So if you’re an EU citizen living in Germany, you don’t need to be German to vote in the European elections in Germany. A German living in Spain would vote there, just as a Spaniard living in Germany would vote there.

Voting rules are nationally set though. So EU citizens who are 16 years or older can vote in Germany and Austria, but those same EU citizens would need to be 18 to vote in France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, or Sweden.

Each country will also handle voter registration processes by their own rules and voting itself takes place on the day it would normally happen in that country. For many countries, this is Sunday, June 9th – although Italy opens its vote on Saturday, June 8th as well.

Ballot papers are placed on desks at a polling station in Nuremberg, southern Germany, during regional elections in Bavaria

Ballot papers are placed on desks at a polling station in Nuremberg, southern Germany. (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)

The vote is proportional and most countries are one national constituency. Some countries do though, have some subnational constituencies. These include Italy, Ireland, Belgium, and Poland.

Italy, for example, has five regional constituencies that elect MEPs. These are Northwest, Northeast, Central, Southern, and Islands. Each one represents four to six of the Italian regions – with the exception of Islands – which elects MEPs to represent Sardinia and Sicily.

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POLITICS

Explained: What’s behind the violence on French island of New Caledonia?

Violent unrest has disrupted daily life on the French Pacific island of New Caledonia - leaving several dead and prompting president Emmanuel Macron to declare a state of emergency. Here's a look at what’s happening, why, and why it matters so much to France.

Published: 15 May 2024 14:45 CEST
Explained: What’s behind the violence on French island of New Caledonia?

Two people have been killed and hundreds more injured, shops were looted and public buildings torched during a second night of rioting in New Caledonia – Nouvelle-Calédonie, in French – as anger over planned constitutional reforms boiled over.

On Wednesday, president Emmanuel Macron declared a state of emergency as the violence continued, with at least one police officer seriously injured.

What began as pro-independence demonstrations have spiralled into three days of the worst violence seen on the French Pacific archipelago since the 1980s. 

Police have arrested more than 130 people since the riots broke out Monday night, with dozens placed in detention to face court hearings, the commission said.

A curfew has been put in place, and armed security forces are patrolling the streets of the capital Noumea.

So, New Caledonia is a French colony?

New Caledonia is, officially, a collectivité d’Outre mer (overseas collective). It’s not one of the five départements d’Outre mer – French Guiana in South America, Martinique and Gaudeloupe in the Caribbean and Réunion and Mayotte in the Indian Ocean – which are officially part of France.

As a collectivité, New Caledonia has special status that was negotiated in 1988 that gives it increasing autonomy over time and more say over its own affairs that the French overseas départements.

Home to about 269,000 people, the archipelago was a penal colony in the 19th century. Today its economy is based mainly on agriculture and vast nickel resources.

What has prompted the riots?

This is about voting rights.

Pro-independence groups believe that constitutional reforms that would give the vote to anyone who has lived on the island for 10 years would dilute the vote held by the indigenous Kanak people – who make up about 41 percent of the population, and the majority of whom favour independence.

New Caledonia’s voter lists have not been updated since 1998 when the Noumea Accord was signed, depriving island residents who arrived from mainland France or elsewhere since of a vote in provincial polls, enlarging the size of the voting population.

Proponents of the reform say that it just updates voting rolls to include long-time residents, opponents believe that it’s an attempt to gerrymander any future votes on independence for the islands.

The Noumea Accord – what’s that?

It was an agreement, signed in 1998, in which France said it would grant increased political power to New Caledonia and its original population, the Kanaks, over a 20-year transition period. 

It was signed on May 5th 1998 by Lionel Jospin, and approved in a referendum in New Caledonia on November 8th, with 72 percent voting in favour.

The landmark deal has led to three referendums. In 2018, 57 percent voted to remain closely linked to France; in October 2020, the vote decreased to 53 percent. In a third referendum in 2021, the people voted against full sovereignty with another narrow margin.

And that’s what the reforms are about?

Yes. The reforms, which have been voted through by MPs in France, but must still be approved by a joint sitting of both houses of the French parliament, would grant the right to vote to anyone who has lived on the island for 10 years or more. 

President Emmanuel Macron has said that lawmakers will vote to definitively adopt the constitutional change by the end of June, unless New Caledonia’s political parties agree on a new text that, “takes into account the progress made and everyone’s aspirations”.

Autonomy has its limits.

How serious is the unrest?

French President Emmanuel Macron urged calm in a letter to the territory’s representatives, calling on them to “unambiguously condemn” the “disgraceful and unacceptable” violence.

New Caledonia pro-independence leader, Daniel Goa, asked people to “go home”, and condemned the looting.

But “the unrest of the last 24 hours reveals the determination of our young people to no longer let France take control of them,” he added.

This isn’t the first time there’s been unrest on the island, is it?

There has been a long history of ethnic tensions on New Caledonia, starting in 1878 when a Kanak insurgency over the rights of Kanaks in the mining industry left 200 Europeans and 600 rebels dead. Some 1,500 Kanaks were sent into exile.

Clashes between Kanaks and Caldoches in the 1980s culminated in a bloody attack and hostage-taking by Kanak separatists in 1988, when six police officers and 19 militants were killed on the island of Ouvea.

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