A little less than 360 million citizens of the European Union will be able to elect 720 deputies of the new five-year convocation of the European Parliament in their countries from June 6 to 9.
Voting will open today for the Dutch, the next day the Irish will vote, on June 8 the Latvians, Maltese and Slovaks, and in all other member states voters will be able to go to the polls on Sunday, June 9.
Although they are officially held in those four days, Estonians already voted on June 3. Czechs and Italians will be able to vote in two days.
The minimum active and passive right to vote is determined by national laws, and in most member states it is the same as the age limit – 18 years.
Exceptions are Belgium, Germany, Malta and Austria, where this year people over the age of 16 will be able to vote, and in Greece, people over the age of 17 will be able to vote.
Voting is a legal obligation in Belgium, Bulgaria, Luxembourg and Greece, and those who fail to do so can be fined.
The right to be elected as MEPs is also available to those over 18 in more than half of the EU member states, with the exception of six countries where the age threshold is 21, in Romania it is 23, and in Greece and Italy it is 25.
The number of deputies elected in individual EU member states depends on the number of voters, so the most deputies, 96, are elected in Germany, which has about 65 million voters.
The French elect 81 deputies, Italy will have 76 deputies, Spain 61, Slovenia and Latvia nine each, Estonia seven, and the least, six deputies each, will be Malta, Cyprus and Luxembourg.
Regardless, MEPs, depending on the size of the country they come from, do not represent the same number of citizens, so an MEP from Germany represents about 875,000 people, and the one from Malta approximately 100,000.
There will be 720 deputies in the new convocation, which is 15 deputies more than in the outgoing parliament.
The most deputies were elected in the 2019 elections, 751, which is also the upper limit prescribed by the fundamental EU treaties. That number then decreased due to Brexit, i.e. the departure of Great Britain from the Union and the departure of British MPs from the EP.
The electoral threshold is also defined by national legislation. 13 countries do not have any electoral threshold, including Germany, Spain and Belgium.
In five member states, the threshold ranges from 1.8 percent to 4 percent, and in nine countries, including France, Poland, Hungary and Romania, it is the same as in national elections and is 5 percent.
Regardless of which day the residents of an EU country go to the polls, the national election commissions will be able to announce the official results only when the last polling stations in all EU member states are closed on June 9.
