The context During the last five years, Portugal has been regarded as a successful case in the European context from both an economic and political point of view (see Fernandes et al, 2018). On the one hand, the country has turned the page on its 2011-2014 crisis, when a financial assistance programme was implemented with painful austerity policies. On the other hand, unlike other Southern European countries, Portugal’s party system has proved to be very resilient. Although mainstream parties have struggled to retain their electoral support, the Socialist Party (PS, Partido Socialista) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD, Partido Social...

  Like five years ago, the Belgian elections to the European Parliament (EP) coincided with the regional and federal elections. As voting is compulsory, the exceptional turnout of 88.5% is a bad indicator of the salience of the election. But from the near absence of European campaigns and candidates from public debate and media, as well as from the marginal differences in the election results between the three levels, we may read the EP election was again overshadowed by national campaigns and candidates. Nevertheless, this competition had a European dimension, as it was dominated by two transnational issues: the climate...

  Introduction Elections to the European Parliament (EP) in Poland took place on Sunday, 26 May 2019. Similarly, as in 2014-2015, they were part of a long 'election marathon' during which Poles elected their representatives in local government (October-November 2018), MEPs (May 2019), MPs and senators to the national parliament (most likely October 2019) and President (most likely May 2020). This specific context of subsequent, fourth already in the history of Poland elections to the European Parliament determined their character and course. Due to its specific context - being one of the skirmishes in the long 'electoral war' (planned for years 2018-2020)...

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,...

The context The 2019 European elections were held only a few months after the October 2018 parliamentary elections. Surveys for the latter elections had predicted that the Christian Social People’s Party (CSV) would win votes and return into government after being an opposition party for the second time since World War II during the 2013-2018 parliament. In the end, the CSV lost 5.2 percentage points of the national vote and two of its parliamentary seats, while the government coalition of the liberal DP, the social democratic LSAP and the Greens kept a majority of seats (31 out of 60) and...