Elections to the European Parliament Cover Image

Izbori za Evropski parlament
Elections to the European Parliament

Author(s): Jelena Ćeranić Perišić
Subject(s): Electoral systems, EU-Legislation
Published by: Institut za uporedno pravo
Keywords: elections; European Parliament; European Union; European Political Parties; voter turnou
Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with elections to the European Parliament. The Parliament is composed of 736 Members who represent the second largest democratic electorate in the world (after India) and the largest trans-national democratic electorate in the history (375 million eligible voters in 2009).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament - cite_note-2 The Parliament has been directly elected every five years by universal suffrage since 1979. After introductory notes with regard to the development of the European Parliament, the first part of the article is dedicated to the legislation regulating the EP elections. While there are some pieces of EUlevel legislation, the elections are still administrated according to each EU Member State’s Rules, making the EP elections 27 different nationally administrated elections to a supra-national assembly. The special attention is paid to the number of seats in the EP. The seats are distributed according to "degressive proportionality", meaning that the larger the state, the more citizens that are represented per Member of the EP. In the second part of the article the author analyses European Political Parties and Political Groups. Members of the EP are organized into seven different parliamentary groups, including non-attached Members known as non-inscrits. The two largest groups are the European People's Party (EPP) and the Socialists & Democrats (S&D). The third part of the article is dedicated to the Election campaigns and Awareness- Raising by the European Political Parties. Within the concluding observations, the author sums up presented observations and especially emphasizes the importance of increasing voter turnout.

  • Page Range: 162-179
  • Page Count: 18
  • Publication Year: 2012
  • Language: Serbian