The Diplomat in Spain

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The Diplomat. Madrid

More than 400 million citizens have been called to go to the polls this Sunday for the European elections. There are different electoral systems among the Twenty-eight and peculiarities such as the fact that the United Kingdom or the Netherlands started the scrutiny last Thursday. The most noteworthy thing about the Spanish case is that it is one of the few countries of the EU with closed lists for these elections.

D´Hont’s system is the electoral formula most used in the EU. A total of 15 countries (Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France and the Czech Republic) use it when obtaining the number of members elect assigned to the lists of candidates, in proportion to the votes they get.

Another four methods are also used: the Hare-Niemeyer, used in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Lithuania; the St.Laguë (Germany, Latvia and Sweden -in its modified version-); and the Droop and Single Transferable Vote (STV) Droop, used in four countries: Ireland, Malta, Northern Ireland (STV Droop) and Slovakia (Droop). In Luxembourg they use the system Hagenbach-Bischoff and in Poland, a mixture of the Hare-Niemeyer and the D´Hont.

As for the lists’ systems, there are three in the EU: open, closed and the single transferable vote. In the open lists, voters can indicate their preferences for one or more candidates of the voting paper. This system is used in 17 countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden.

In closed lists, political parties establish the order of the candidates and voters can only choose one party with their vote. That is what happens in 8 countries:  Germany, Spain, France, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, the United Kingdom (except for Northern Ireland) and Romania.

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There are open lists in 17 countries where preference towards more or one candidates can be stated

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The transferable single vote is based, for its part, on the proportional representation and the preferential vote. The vote of a voter is initially assigned to their favourite candidate and if the candidate had been already elected or eliminated, all the remaining votes would be transferred according to the preferences selected by the voter. The system is used in Ireland, Malta and Northern Ireland.

On the other hand, there is a single electoral district in the majority of the countries of the EU, which is the case of Spain. However, there are different electoral districts in the United Kingdom (12), France (8), Italy (5), Belgium (4) and Ireland (3). There are also three countries divided into different electoral districts: Germany (16), Malta (13) and Poland (13).

In relation to the points for the distribution of seats, there is not a specific number in 14 countries: Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Slovenia, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Holland, Luxembourg, Malta, Estonia and Finland.

However, it is necessary to reach 1.8% in Cyprus; 3% in Greece; 4% in Sweden, Italy and Austria; and 5% in Croatia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia and France, where the line is applied to each of the electoral districts.