International

International

International

  Introduction 2019 European elections in Croatia were held in a very different political environment than previous EP elections. Economic conditions have improved as GDP growth resumed in 2015, unemployment has declined by more than a half and the government fiscal position has also improved. However, the entry into the EU and expiration of the restrictions on the free movement of labour produced a mass emigration of mostly younger population towards countries of Western Europe. Thus, despite the migrant crisis that affected Croatia in 2015 and 2016, and the constant pressure of migration on the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, it...

Introduction The 2019 European election in the Republic of Cyprus came three years after the last legislative elections of 2016 and one year after the presidential elections of 2018 which saw the right-wing governing party, DISY and President Nicos Anastasiades, renew their mandate for another five years. In the backlog of the campaign politics and electoral results that lie before us, one can observe a number of realignments in the patterns of political competition. Although each of them carries significance, their overall relevance in the island’s political evolution is certainly not analogous to a major transformation of domestic politics. Rather,...

Short summary National Parliament election was called in Denmark early May 2019. Hence, much of the focus that would otherwise have been devoted to the European Parliament (EP) election went to the national election campaign. Yet, the two elections thematically overlapped. The overall focus was on the climate crisis and, secondly, immigration. This focus secured a successful EP election for the green parties (the Socialist People’s Party (SF) and the Danish Social-Liberal Party (RL)). But also, the mainstream parties, particularly the Liberals, enjoyed an increase in Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), which was mainly at the expense of the...

  The election in Slovenia for eight European Parliament (EP) seats took place on May 26. For the EP elections, Slovenia is considered a single electoral constituency. The election is based on a system of proportional representation – it is obligatory to vote for a party list and optional to also give a preference vote to any of the individual candidates on the selected party list. EP seats are distributed according to the d’Hondt method. There is no formal electoral threshold. All stated, together with the official introduction of a gender quota system, has proven to represent a fairly effective...

  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...