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Member
Between the 22rd and 25th of May all roughly 400 M eligible voters across the European Union are asked to elect
all 751 Members of the European Parliament.
Map of European Parliament constituencies
Wikipedia
The Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on 1 December 2009, provides that the European Parliament shall
elect the president of the European Commission on the basis of a proposal made by the European Council,
taking into account the European elections (article 17, paragraph 7 of the Treaty on European Union). This
provision will apply for the first time for the 2014 elections.
Wikipedia
Every member state has their own political parties. As it would cause major fracturing into hundreds of different
parties within the European Parliament were they all to stand by themselves the different parties usually join up
into so-called groups. These will usually combine parties of similar political convictions from many different
member states. The current parliament has 7 groups with 736 parliamentarians; the remaining 30 are non-attached-
members.
The Group of the European People's Party (EPP), is a centre-right political group in the European Parliament.
The EPP Group is made up of MEPs elected from the lists of member parties of the European People's Party (EPP).
While the European People's Party is an umbrella party of national-level political parties from across the continent
of Europe, the Group is made up of representatives of parties in member states of the European Union only, who have
been elected in their country to represent them in the European Parliament. The group comprises politicians of
Christian democratic and conservative orientation.
Wikipedia
The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) is the political group in the European Parliament
of the Party of European Socialists (PES). The group dates its ancestry via various names back to the beginning of
the European Parliament in 1953. Until the 1999 European election it was the largest group in Parliament. S&D is
currently the second-largest group in the European Parliament and adopted its present-day name on 23 June 2009.
Wikipedia
The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE/ADLE) is the current liberal–centrist political
group of the European Parliament. It is made up of MEPs from two European political parties, the Alliance of Liberals
and Democrats for Europe Party (formerly the European Liberal Democrat and Reform Party) and the European
Democratic Party, which collectively form the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe.
ALDE is one of the three oldest Groups, dating its unofficial origin back to September 1952 and the first meeting
of the Parliament's predecessor, the Common Assembly. Founded as an explicitly Liberal Group, it has expanded its
remit to cover the different centrist traditions of each new Member State as they acceded to the Union,
progressively changing its name in the process.
The pro-European platform of the group espouses neoliberal economics, and support for European integration and
the European single market.
Wikipedia
The Greens/European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA) is the political group in the European Parliament containing
green and regionalist political parties.
The Greens/EFA group consists of two distinct European political parties – the European Green Party (EGP) and the
European Free Alliance (EFA). The EFA consists of parties representing stateless nations, regionalist and minority
political interests. The Alliance has generally limited its membership to progressive parties. These European
parties are joined by national parties, such as the Dutch Europe Transparent (between 2004 and 2009) and the
Swedish Pirate Party (since 2009).
Wikipedia
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) is a conservative, anti-federalist and Eurosceptic political
group in the European Parliament. The group currently comprises 57 MEPs, making it the fifth-largest group in the
European Parliament.
Founded after the June 2009 European elections, it is based on the Movement for European Reform. The largest
parties in the group are the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom, Law and Justice (PiS) and Poland Together
(PRJG) of Poland, and the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) of the Czech Republic. Most of the member parties joined
from the European Democrats section of the EPP-ED and the Union for Europe of the Nations.
In the media, the group is described as centre-right to right-wing. It is more eurosceptic than the three largest
groups, but less than the hard eurosceptic EFD. It is affiliated to the Alliance of European Conservatives and
Reformists Europarty, but also includes the sole ECPM MEP.
Wikipedia
European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) is a left-wing political group in the European Parliament
established in 1995. The group comprises political parties of mostly socialist and communist orientation.
According to its 1994 constituent declaration, the group is opposed to the present European political structure,
but committed to integration. That declaration sets out three aims for the construction of another Europe: the
total change of institutions to make them "fully democratic"; and breaking with "neo-liberal monetarist policies";
and a policy of co-development and equitable cooperation. The group wants to disband NATO and "strengthen the
OSCE".The group is ambiguous between reformism and revolution, leaving it up to each party to decide on the
manner theydeem best suited to achieve these aims. As such, it has simultaneously positioned itself as
"insiders" within theEuropean institutions, enabling it to influence the decisions made by co-decision,
and as "outsiders" by itswillingness to seek "another Union" which would abolish the Maastricht Treaty.
Wikipedia
Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) is a right-wing Eurosceptic political group in the European Parliament.
Formed after the European parliamentary election in 2009, the EFD group is mostly made up of elements of the
now-defunct Independence/Democracy and Union for a Europe of Nations groups from the outgoing parliament.
The group is a coalition of ten political parties – the largest being the UK Independence Party (UKIP) with eleven
seats and the Italian Northern League, with nine seats – along with one independent. EFD is the most hostile to
European integration among the groups in the European Parliament. It is considered to belong to the right-wing
to far-right part of the political spectrum.
Wikipedia
The European Parliament (abbreviated as Europarl or the EP) is the directly elected parliamentary institution of
the European Union (EU). Together with the Council of the European Union (the Council) and the European Commission,
it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described (by its own members) as one of the most
powerful legislatures in the world. The Parliament is composed of 766 members, who represent the second largest
democratic electorate in the world (after the Parliament of India) and the largest trans-national democratic
electorate in the world (375 million eligible voters in 2009).
Wikipedia
No pan-European opinion polls are carried out, however several institutes have compiled predictions of the
outcome of the elections based on national polls.
Wikipedia
elections2014.eu
There is no uniform voting system for the election of MEPs; rather, each member state is free to choose its
own system, subject to three restrictions:
- The system must be a form of proportional representation, under either the party list or the single
transferable vote system. - The electoral area may be subdivided if this will not generally affect the proportional nature of
the voting system. - Any election threshold at the national level must not exceed five percent.
that, while the size of the population of each country is taken into account, smaller states elect more
MEPs than is proportional to their populations. As the numbers of MEPs to be elected by each country have
arisen from treaty negotiations, there is no precise formula for the apportionment of seats among member
states. No change in this configuration can occur without the unanimous consent of all governments.
Wikipedia
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