European Elections since 1979

Elections to the European Parliament are held every five years. The European Parliament was directly elected for the first time in 1979. The next elections will take place on 10 June 2004, to choose 78 UK MEPs.

On 10 June 1999 voters in Britain elected MEPs under a proportional representation system for the first time.

The European Parliamentary Elections Act, which received Royal Assent on 14th January 1999, introduced a regional list system with seats allocated to parties in proportion to their share of the vote.

Britain is divided into eleven electoral regions with between 3 and 10 MEPs representing each region. Nine English regions elect 64 MEPs; Scotland elects seven MEPs and Wales four MEPs. In Northern Ireland 3 MEPs are elected under its own system of proportional representation.

Resident in Gibraltar will be voting in the South West Region. The East Midlands, North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber regions will conduct all-postal ballot votes in 2004.

All 732 MEPs in the European Parliament will be elected under some form of proportional representation. Differences exist between Member States for example in the methods used (eg. Droop quota, d'Hondt system, Single Transferable Vote) or in the constituency unit (regional or national).

 

What happens if a sitting MEP resigns or dies ? If the MEP was originally elected from a party list, the vacant seat would go to the next eligible person from that party's list. There would, however, be a by-election if the vacancy arose because of the death or resignation of an independent MEP or if there was no-one left on the party list.

 

European Parliament Elections: Voter Turnout Across the EU (1979-1999) (%)

	1979	1984	1989	1994	1999
EU	63	61	58.5	56.8	49.4
Austria	-	-	-	67.7 (1996)	49.0
Belgium	91.6	92.2	90.7	90.7	90.0
Denmark	47.1	52.3	46.1	52.9	50.4
Finland	-	-	-	60.3 (1996)	30.1
France	60.7	56.7	48.7	52.7	47.0
Germany	65.7	56.8	62.4	60	45.2
Greece	78.6 (1981)	77.2	79.9	71.2	70.2
Ireland	63.6	47.6	68.3	44	50.5
Italy	85.5	83.9	81.5	74.8	70.8
Luxembourg	88.9	87	87.4	88.5	85.8
Netherlands	57.8	50.5	47.2	36	29.9
Portugal	-	72.2 (1987)	51.1	35.5	40.4
Sweden	-	-	-	41.6 (1995)	38.3
Spain	-	68.9 (1987)	54.8	59.1	64.4
UK	31.6	32.6	36.2	36.4	24.0