Elections to the European Parliament

Elections to the European Parliament take place every five years by universal adult suffrage; with more than 400 million people eligible to vote, they are the second largest democratic elections in the world after India's.
Until 2019, 751 MEPs were elected to the European Parliament, which has been directly elected since 1979. Since the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU in 2020, the number of MEPs, including the president, has been 705. No other EU institution is directly elected, with the Council of the European Union and the European Council being only indirectly legitimated through national elections. While European political parties have the right to campaign EU-wide for the European elections, campaigns still take place through national election campaigns, advertising national delegates from national parties.
The election days are 4 consecutive days, from Thursday to Sunday, between April 7th and July 10th. The latest election took place in 2024 and the next election will take place in 2029.

Apportionment

The allocation of seats to each member state is based on the principle of degressive proportionality, so that, while the size of the population of each country is taken into account, smaller states elect more MEPs than is proportional to their populations. As the numbers of MEPs to be elected by each country have arisen from treaty negotiations, there is no precise formula for the apportionment of seats among member states. No change in this configuration can occur without the unanimous consent of all governments.

Voting system

There is no uniform voting system for the election of MEPs; rather, each member state is free to choose its own system, subject to certain restrictions:

The system must be a form of proportional representation, under either the party list or the single transferable vote system.
The electoral area may be subdivided if this will not generally affect the proportional nature of the electoral system.
The electoral threshold, if there is any, may not exceed 5%. From the 2024 election there might be a minimum threshold of between 2% and 5% for constituencies with more than 35 seats, if the Council Decision 2018/994 of 13 July 2018 is approved by all EU states in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.
Voting difference by country

Most of the member states of the European Union elect their MEPs with a single constituency covering the entire state, using party-list proportional representation. There is however a great variety of electoral procedures: some countries use a highest averages method of proportional representation, some use the largest remainder method, some open lists and others closed. In addition, the method of calculating the quota and the election threshold vary from country to country. Countries with multiple constituencies are:

Belgium is split into three constituencies: the Dutch-speaking electoral college, the French-speaking electoral college, and the German-speaking electoral college. The first two of these elect their MEPs using party list PR, but the German-speaking constituency only has one member, who is therefore not elected using a proportional method.
Ireland is split into three constituencies and uses the single transferable vote.
The United Kingdom, historically up until its exit from the Union, was split into constituencies representing Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and each of the regions of England. Northern Ireland used the single transferable vote while the other constituencies used party lists. Before 1999, England, Scotland and Wales used first-past-the-post.

Germany, Italy and Poland use a different system, whereby parties are awarded seats based on their nationwide vote as in all of the states that elect members from a single constituency; these seats are given to the candidates on regional lists. With the number of seats for each party known, these are given to the candidates on the regional lists based on the number of votes from each region towards the party's nationwide total, awarded proportionally to the regions. These subdivisions are not strictly constituencies, as they do not affect how many seats each party is awarded, but are districts that the members represent once elected. The number of members for each region is decided dynamically after the election, and depends on voter turnout in each region. A region with high turnout will result in more votes for the parties there, which will result in a greater number of MEPs elected for that region.

European political parties

The European Union has a multi-party system involving a number of ideologically diverse European political parties. As no single European party has ever gained power alone, their affiliated parliamentary groups in the European Parliament work together to pass legislation. Since no pan-European government is formed as a result of European elections, long-term coalitions do not exist.
European parties have the exclusive right to campaign for the European elections; their parliamentary groups are strictly forbidden to campaign and to spend funds on any campaign-related activity. Campaign activities differ per member state since national elections for European Parliament representatives are governed by national law. For instance, a European party may buy unlimited advertising airtime in Estonia, while it is barred from any form of paid advertising in Sweden.
Ahead of the 2014 European elections, European political parties decided to put forward candidates for President of the European Commission, also known as "Spitzenkandidaten" or "lead candidates". Each lead candidate led the pan-European campaign of its European party. Even though there is no legal obligation on the European Council to propose the lead candidate of the strongest party to the European Parliament as its nominee for President of the Commission, it was assumed that the Council would accept voters' decision. Indeed, following the victory of the European People's Party in the 2014 European elections, its lead candidate Jean-Claude Juncker was nominated by the Council and later approved by the European Parliament. However, following the 2019 European elections, the Council nominated Ursula von der Leyen instead of the EPP's lead candidate, Manfred Weber; the European Parliament later approved this nomination.
The two largest European political parties are the centre-right European People's Party and the centre-left Party of European Socialists. They also form the two largest parliamentary groups, the EPP Group and S&D, along with national parties not members of the European parties but represented in the European Parliament.
There are numerous other European parties and groups, spanning the entire political spectrum. Sometimes, two or more European parties sit in the same group, such as members of the European Green Party and of the European Free Alliance sitting together in the Greens–European Free Alliance group. Members of the European Parliament who are not members of a parliamentary group are known as non-inscrits.

Voter behaviour

A 1980 analysis by Karlheinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt concluded that European elections were fought on national issues and used by voters to punish their governments mid-term, making European Parliament elections de facto national elections of second rank. This phenomenon is also referred to by some experts as the "punishment traps", wherein voters use the European Parliament elections and other European integration referendums as punishment for governments on account of bad economic performance. There is also a study that showed how voters tend to choose candidates of a party at the European level if it has a history of advancing specific issues that they care about. This is related to the second theory that explains voter behavior and it involves the so-called attitude voting in which voters are assumed to be acting on the basis of their attitude towards the European integration. This is analogous to the American two-party system in the sense that voting on issues and legislation in the Parliament only requires a yes or no vote, which means voters vote for options or candidates that are close to their ideals.
Turnout had constantly fallen in every EU election from 1979 until 2014. The 2019 election, however, saw turnout increase to its highest level since 1994, at 51%. In 2009, the overall turnout was at 43%, down from 45.5% in 2004. In Britain the turnout was just 34.3%, down from 38% in 2004.
Despite falling below 50% between 1999 and 2014, turnout was not as low as that of the US Midterm elections, which usually falls below 40%. However, the comparison with the US voter turnout is hampered due to the fact that the US president is elected in separate and direct elections, whereas the President of the European Commission is elected by the European Parliament, giving the European Parliament elections considerable weight. Some, such as former President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, have also noted that turnout in the 1999 election was higher than the previous US presidential election. German MEP Jo Leinen has suggested that EU parties name their top candidate for the position of President of the European Commission in order to increase turnout. This happened for the 2014 election, with EPP candidate Jean Claude Juncker ultimately selected, after the EPP won the most seats overall.
As of 2024, Bulgaria's, Cyprus, Germany's, Hungary's, Malta's and Sweden (Swedish Social Democratic have won every EU election.

Results

Historical percentage results in union-wide elections of the three major groups by region:
Legend: Socialist – Liberal – People's

Results by member state

Off-year

1981: Greece
1987: Spain, Portugal
1995: Sweden
1996: Austria, Finland
2007: Bulgaria, Romania
2013: Croatia