Andrija Henjak European parliament elections in Croatia took place only a year after the special EP elections held in 2013 just before Croatia’s accession to the EU. Croatian entry into the EU, unlike the accession of other countries of central and Eastern Europe in 2004 and 2007, was not an event market by palpable enthusiasm and high expectations, but rather, it was market with subdued optimism or indifference. It was seen by the public both as a chance to change the direction of the stagnant economy and improve the functioning of institutions, as well as an inevitable development with uncertain...

Context 2019 EP elections in Estonia took place amidst a heated political atmosphere that prevailed in the aftermath of the general election held less than three months prior. In a “remarkable failure of mainstream politics” (Walker, 2019), two liberal parties, Reform and Centre (both members of the ALDE group in the EP), failed to cooperate in the process of government formation. Having rejected an invitation by the victorious Reform Party to start coalition talks, the incumbent Centre Party formed a coalition with two right-wing parties, including a moderate Pro Patria and an illiberal, xenophobic, and eurosceptic Estonian Conservative People’s Party...

di Konstantinos Athanasiades E’ stata senza dubbio l’astensione a dominare il campo. Questo il dato principale nelle elezioni europee tenute domenica scorsa a Cipro (divisa tra la Repubblica di Cipro e la “Repubblica Turca di Cipro Nord”, riconosciuta solo dalla Turchia). Secondo il Ministero dell’Interno, il 56% dell’elettorato ha infatti scelto l’astensione (quasi 16 punti in più rispetto al 2009), esprimendo la propria disapprovazione per il sistema politico e per le misure di austerità economica introdotte nell’ultimo anno. Paradossalmente, tuttavia, all’alto livello di astensione non sembra essere corrisposto un cambiamento significativo dei rapporti di forza tra partiti, né una forte...

Tom Verthé In Belgium the elections for the European Parliament have in the past always been held together with the regional elections. Because of this particularity the European elections have long since been considered second-order elections in Belgium (Reif & Schmitt, 1980; Van Aelst & Lefevere, 2012). Because of the split in the party system since the 70s, the regional elections in Belgium are clearly a first-order election since, for the larger part, there is no difference in terms of voting population and party offer between the regional and federal elections (Russo & Deschouwer, 2014). Federal (and even European) elections...

  Introduction Contrary to the general European trend, the Maltese Labour Party won the European election held on the 25 May by a comfortable majority and took four of the six European parliament seats allotted to Malta. In 2014 it had also won a majority of votes, but only three seats (Carammia and Pace, 2015). The opposition Nationalist Party failed to arrest its electoral decline whose roots go back to 2004, but won the other two seats. As in the previous three European elections the Europhile parties won more than 96% of the valid votes cast. This is consistent with...