Introduction On May 17, 2019, the campaign for the European Parliament election 2019 came to an abrupt halt in Austria. That evening, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the German magazine Der Spiegel released a video that resulted in one of the biggest national political scandals in Austrian history, now known as “Ibiza-gate”. In the video – secretly recorded shortly before the national election in 2017 – the FPÖ-party leader Heinz-Christian Strache and deputy leader Johann Gudenus revealed modes of illegally funding the FPÖ, promising government orders at inflated prices to a purported niece of a Russian oligarch in a...

According to the spontaneous reactions from the parties’ wakes during the Swedish election night May 26, all parties were winners. The parties that lost support did not lose as much as they had feared, and among the parties that gained, celebration was loud and joyful. The only exception was the small Feminist Initiative that lost the single seat they won in 2014. Background The European Parliament election 2019 took place less than a year after the national election in September 2018, which led to the most prolonged government negotiations in Swedish history. Not until January 2019 did the Social Democrats and...

Introduction Concurrent to regional-level elections in the state of Bremen and local election in nine out of sixteen states, Germany elected their share of representatives for the ninth legislative term of the European Parliament (EP) on May 26th. With 96 seats, Germany contributes the largest number of politicians to the EP. These parliamentarians are elected based on a proportional electoral system and in a single constituency. Plus, for the second time, there is no legal threshold for parties to win seats which means that due to the large number of seats available already around 0.6 per cent of the votes...

Introduction The elections for the European Parliament in Finland took place in the aftermath of the national parliamentary elections that took place on 14 April 2019. In this election, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) with 17.7% of the votes narrowly edged out the right-wing populist Finns party (PS) with 17.5% in second and the conservative National Coalition Party (KOK) in third with 17.0% of the votes. Consequently, the election campaign for the EP elections was rather short. The debate centred on the possible success of the Eurosceptic PS, since the party was expected to ride on the wave of Eurosceptic parties...

European parliament (EP) election in Lithuania was overshadowed by the competitive direct presidential election. Three main contenders were close in the polls during the preceding months. The second round between two frontrunners Ingrida Šimonytė and Gitanas Nausėda was held two weeks after the first one, simultaneously with the voting for EP. Overlap of two elections raised the otherwise (potentially) low turnout in EP election (53.1 per cent of Lithuanians voted), but it also meant that less attention was given to EP campaign by the main political parties. Context and campaign European parliament elections in Lithuania quite closely conform to the second-order...