The EU and the European elections explained!

In this dossier:

• EU Member States

• Europe and the EP elections in numbers

• Key EU institutions

• Majorities in the European Parliament (EP)

• Turnout in European elections from 1979 to 2019

• What happens next after the European elections?

• Timeline of the history of the EU

• Democracy in the EU – Index

Europe and the EP elections in numbers

• 27 EU Member States will simultaneously elect a new European Parliament, on 6-9 June 2024

• 400+ million people eligible to vote (2nd largest democratic election in the world after India)

• The next European election will be the 10th direct election to the European Parliament. The European elections take place every 5 years

• There are currently 7 political groups in the European Parliament (EP). There are currently 10 registered European political parties

• There will be 720 Members (MEPs) in the next European Parliament

• The election results will be taken into account to attribute EU top jobs

• There's 1 EP President and 14 EP Vice-Presidents

• Voter turnout in the 2019 European elections was 51%

• Voting age: 16 in Belgium, Germany, Malta, Austria; 17 in Greece; 18 in all other EU Member States

• Voting is compulsory in Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece and Luxembourg

Majorities in the European Parliament (EP)

The EP currently has 705 seats, distributed among the 27 EU Member States according to their population. From 96 seats for Germany to 6 seats for Malta. After the EP 2024 election, as usual, the MEPs will not be grouped by country, but by political group. There are currently 7 political groups in the EP (seat number in November 2023):

•      The Left (GUE/NGL, 37 seats)

•      Socialists & Democrats (S&D, 140 seats)

•      The Greens/Free European Alliance (Greens/EFA, 72 seats)

•      Renew Europe (Renew, 102 seats)

•      European People's Party (EPP, 178 seats)

•      European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR, 68 seats)

•      Identity and Democracy (ID, 59 seats)

•      49 non-attached MEPs

Turnout in the European elections from 1979 to 2019

What happens next after the European elections?

• The EP political groups are constituted

• The European Parliament elects its President and Vice-Presidents

• The European Council puts forward a proposal for a President of the European Commission, taking into account the results of the European elections

• The European Parliament votes on the proposed European Commission President. If rejected, the European Council must make a new proposal within one month

• If approved, the elected European Commission President asks the EU Member States to submit their candidacies for European Commissioners - each EU Member State proposes its candidate (currently 26 EU Commissioners)

• The candidates will be vetted by the relevant European Parliament committees, which must confirm them

• The European Parliament votes on the approval of the proposed European Commission as a whole

Democracy in the EU – Index

There are increasingly serious democratic deficits in some EU Member States. One of the major political tasks of the next few years is therefore to defend the EU as a democratic project. With its democracy index, the Economist Intelligence Unit shows which EU Member States have democratic deficits.

The ranking of EU countries is based on the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) 2022 report. The first number refers to the global ranking, the number in brackets is the “Democracy Score”, which is given on a scale of 1-10. The higher the number, the more “democratic” the country is rated. The score is made up of the following five categories: electoral processes and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, civil liberties.

Based on scores on a range of indicators within these categories, each country is assigned to one of four regime types: “full democracy,” “flawed democracy,” “hybrid regime,” or “authoritarian regime.”

This article was originally published in German for böll.thema 24/1. License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.