European Parliament election, 2014

The European Parliament election of 2014 has begun and will end on 25th May. The European Parliament is the only legislative chamber of the European Union that is held accountable to the people; it has 751 members and the citizens of the 28 nations within the European Union will be voting to either re-elect or replace their respective Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). While the election lasts for four days, every country but one has a day to vote; the exception is the Czech Republic, which votes on two of the four days.

How are MEPs chosen? Each country is a component of the election and there are regional constituencies within each country. For example, the United Kingdom has 12 constituencies and 73 MEPs allocated to it; my family and I live in the East Midlands constituency, which has five MEPs. MEPs are elected through proportional representation: this means that when a political party reaches a certain percentage of the vote - say 10% - they will win seats. By using this method of electing candidates, each constituency is often represented by several parties.

What's the predicted outcome for this election? From what I've read and from what my brother has told me, political parties that are either against the European Union or want its power over member countries reduced are set to perform strongly; many of these parties as regarded as far-left or far-right. People are voting for such parties because many Europeans feel as though the European Union is compromising each member nations' sovereignty and/or has not done enough to help regular Europeans; they think that the main parties in their respective nations have failed to tackle the European Union's problems. Also, over the past few years several European governments have used austerity to handle the economic crisis (unlike the United States, which chose to spend money on its economy); people now feel that the austerity has gone too far and many of these other parties are capitalising on this.

As for how the United Kingdom will vote, like I wrote in yesterday's post, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are expected to perform poorly in the local elections; that expectation holds for the European elections, too. Again, Labour and the United Kingdom Independence Party are expected to gain the majority of the MEPs; the Green Party of England and Wales and the Scottish National Party aim to secure additional seats, while the British National Party is hoping to keep its sole MEP, although that is extremely unlikely. In this country, 39 parties are participating and they are fielding 747 candidates (not in every constituency, though, as some parties are regional, such as the Social Democratic and Labour Party, which is only on the ballot in Northern Ireland).

This is the first time since 1994 that my family and I have been in the United Kingdom while a European Parliament election has occurred; the European Parliament elections that took place between then and now were in 1999, 2004 and 2009.