What’s at Stake in the European Parliament Election That Concludes Sunday?

Ballots are set up on a table for the European Parliament election at a polling station in Madrid, on June 9, 2024. (AFP)
Ballots are set up on a table for the European Parliament election at a polling station in Madrid, on June 9, 2024. (AFP)
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What’s at Stake in the European Parliament Election That Concludes Sunday?

Ballots are set up on a table for the European Parliament election at a polling station in Madrid, on June 9, 2024. (AFP)
Ballots are set up on a table for the European Parliament election at a polling station in Madrid, on June 9, 2024. (AFP)

Nearly 400 million European Union citizens have been going to polls this week to elect members of the European Parliament, or MEPs, in one of the biggest global democratic events.

Far-right parties are seeking to gain more power amid a rise in the cost of living and farmers' discontent, while the wars in Gaza and Ukraine stay on the minds of voters.

One of the biggest questions is whether European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will remain in charge as the public face of the EU.

Here is a look at the election and the biggest issues at stake:

WHEN IS THE VOTE? EU elections are held every five years across the 27-member bloc. This year marks the 10th parliamentary election since the first polls in 1979, and the first after Brexit.

The elections started Thursday in the Netherlands and finish on Sunday, when most countries hold their election. Initial results can only be revealed in the evening after polling stations have closed in all member states.

HOW DOES VOTING WORK? The voting is done by direct universal suffrage in a single ballot.

The number of members elected in each country depends on the size of the population. It ranges from six for Malta, Luxembourg and Cyprus to 96 for Germany. In 2019, Europeans elected 751 lawmakers. Following the United Kingdom's departure from the EU in 2020, the number of MEPs fell to 705 with some of the 73 seats previously held by British MEPs redistributed to other member states.

After the election, the European Parliament will have 15 additional members, bringing the total to 720. Twelve countries will get extra MEPs.

National political parties contest elections, but once they are elected, most of the lawmakers then join transnational political groups.

WHO IS VOTING? The minimum voting age is 18 in most member states. Belgium lowered it to 16 in a law adopted in 2022. Germany, Malta and Austria are also permitting 16-year-olds to vote. In Greece, the youngest voting age is 17.

A minimum age is also required for candidates to stand for election — from 18 in most countries to 25 in Italy and Greece.

A resident of Magenta District holds his passport and voter card at a polling station during the vote for European Parliament election in Noumea, France's Pacific territory of New Caledonia, on June 9, 2024. (AFP)

WHAT ABOUT TURNOUT? European Union elections usually don't bring a huge turnout, but there was a clear upturn in public interest in the 2019 election. At 50.7%, the turnout was eight points higher than in 2014 after steadily falling since 1979, when it reached 62%.

In April, the latest edition of the European Parliament’s Eurobarometer highlighted a surge of interest in the upcoming election. Around 71% of Europeans said they are likely to cast a ballot.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN ISSUES? Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is at the forefront of citizens’ minds, with defense and security seen as key campaign issues. At the national level, the EU’s defense and security was mentioned first in nine countries.

The economy, jobs, poverty and social exclusion, public health, climate change and the future of Europe are also featuring prominently as issues.

WHAT DO EU LAWMAKERS DO? The European Parliament is the only EU institution to be elected by European citizens. It’s a real counterpower to the powerful EU’s executive arm, the European Commission.

The parliament doesn't have the initiative to propose legislation, but its powers are expanding. It is now competent on a wide range of topics, voting on laws relating to climate, banking rules, agriculture, fisheries, security or justice. The legislature also votes on the EU budget, which is crucial to the implementation of European policies, including, for instance, aid delivered to Ukraine.

Lawmakers are also a key element of the check and balances system since they need to approve the nomination of all EU commissioners, who are the equivalent of ministers. It can also force the whole commission to resign with a vote of a two-third majority.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and her husband Heiko von der Leyen leave a polling station after voting during the European Parliament elections in Burgdorf near Hanover, Germany, June 9, 2024. (Reuters)

WHAT'S THE CURRENT MAKEUP OF THE PARLIAMENT? With 176 seats out of 705 as of the end of the last plenary session in April, the center-right European People's Party is the largest political group in the European Parliament.

Von der Leyen is from the EPP and hopes to remain at the helm of the EU's executive arm after the election.

The second-largest group is the S&D, the political group of the center-left Party of European Socialists, which currently holds 139 seats. The pro-business liberal and pro-European Renew group holds 102 seats ahead of an alliance made up of green and regionalist political parties that holds 72 seats.

FAR RIGHT LOOKS TO MAKE GAINS Two groups with far-right parties, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) and Identity and Democracy (ID), could be headed to becoming the third- and fourth-largest political groups at the European Parliament. The two groups have many divergences and it's unclear to what extent they could team up to affect the EU's agenda, especially the EU's efforts to support Ukraine against Russia in the war.

The EPP and S&D are expected to remain stable. Pro-business liberals and greens could both take a hit after they made big gains at the previous election.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE ELECTION? Once the weight of each political force is determined, MEPs will elect their president at the first plenary session, from July 16-19. Then, most likely in September after weeks of negotiations, they will nominate the president of the European Commission, following a proposal made by the member states.

In 2019, von der Leyen won a narrow majority (383 votes in favor, 327 against, 22 abstentions) to become the first woman to head the institution. Parliamentarians will also hear from the European commissioners before approving them in a single vote.

Von der Leyen has good chances to be appointed for another term, but she needs to secure the support of enough leaders. She has also antagonized many lawmakers by suggesting she could work with the hard right depending on the outcome of the elections.



Europe’s Military Personnel Shortfalls Exposed as Trump Warns US Security Priorities Lie Elsewhere 

Lithuanian Land Force soldiers attend the Allied Spirit 25 exercise in Hohenfels, Germany, 12 March 2025. (EPA)
Lithuanian Land Force soldiers attend the Allied Spirit 25 exercise in Hohenfels, Germany, 12 March 2025. (EPA)
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Europe’s Military Personnel Shortfalls Exposed as Trump Warns US Security Priorities Lie Elsewhere 

Lithuanian Land Force soldiers attend the Allied Spirit 25 exercise in Hohenfels, Germany, 12 March 2025. (EPA)
Lithuanian Land Force soldiers attend the Allied Spirit 25 exercise in Hohenfels, Germany, 12 March 2025. (EPA)

In the year after Russia launched outright war on Ukraine, NATO leaders approved a set of military plans designed to repel an invasion of Europe. It was the biggest shake-up of the alliance’s defense readiness preparations since the Cold War.

The secret plans set out how Western allies would defend NATO territory from the Atlantic to the Arctic, through the Baltic region and Central Europe, down to the Mediterranean Sea. Up to 300,000 troops would move to its eastern flank within 30 days, many of them American. That would climb to 800,000 within six months.

But the Trump administration warned last month that US priorities lie elsewhere. Europe must take care of its own security, and those goals now seem questionable. Mustering just 30,000 European troops to police any future peace in Ukraine is proving a challenge.

Billions of euros are being shifted to military budgets, but only slowly, and the Europeans are struggling to fire up production in their defense industries.

Beyond funding, tens of thousands more European citizens might have to complete military service, and time is of the essence. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has warned that Russian forces could be capable of launching an attack on European territory in 2030.

Concerned about Russia's intentions, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wants to introduce large-scale military training for every adult male, and double the size of Poland's army to around 500,000 soldiers.

“If Ukraine loses the war or if it accepts the terms of peace, armistice or capitulation ... then, without a doubt — and we can all agree on that — Poland will find itself in a much more difficult geopolitical situation,” Tusk warned lawmakers last week.

The scale of Europe's military personnel shortage

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that Europe, including the UK, has almost 1.5 million active duty personnel. But many can't be deployed on a battlefield, and those who can are hard to use effectively without a centralized command system.

The number of Russian troops in Ukraine at the end of 2024 was estimated to be around 700,000.

NATO troops are controlled by a US general, using American air transport and logistics.

Analysts say that in the event of a Russian attack, NATO’s top military officer would probably dispatch around 200,000 US troops to Europe to build on the 100,000 US military personnel already based there.

With the Americans out of the picture, “a realistic estimate may therefore be that an increase in European capacities equivalent to the fighting capacity of 300,000 US troops is needed,” the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank estimates.

“Europe faces a choice: either increase troop numbers significantly by more than 300,000 to make up for the fragmented nature of national militaries, or find ways to rapidly enhance military coordination,” Bruegel said.

The question is how.

Making up the numbers NATO is encouraging countries to build up personnel numbers, but the trans-Atlantic alliance isn't telling them how to do it. Maintaining public support for the armed forces and for Ukraine is too important to risk by dictating choices.

“The way they go about it is intensely political, so we wouldn’t prescribe any way of changing this — whether to go for conscription, elective conscription, bigger reserves,” a senior NATO official said on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to brief journalists unless he remained unnamed.

“We do stress the point that fighting with those regional plans means that we are in collective defense and likely in an attrition war that requires way more manpower than we currently have, or we designed our force models to deliver,” he added.

Eleven European countries have compulsory military service: Austria, Cyprus, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, and non-European Union nation Norway. The length of service ranges from as little as two months in Croatia to 19 months in Norway.

Poland isn't considering a return to universal military service, but rather a reserve system based on the model in Switzerland, where every man is obliged to serve in the armed forces or an alternative civilian service. Women can volunteer.

Belgium’s new defense minister plans to write a letter in November to around 120,000 citizens who are age 18 to try to persuade at least 500 of them to sign up for voluntary military service. Debate about the issue goes on in the UK and Germany.

Confronting the challenges

Germany’s professional armed forces had 181,174 active service personnel at the end of last year — slightly lower than in 2023, according to a parliamentary report released Tuesday. That means it’s no closer to reaching a Defense Ministry target of 203,000 by 2031.

Last year, 20,290 people started serving in the German military, or Bundeswehr, an 8% increase, the report said. But of the 18,810 who joined in 2023, more than a quarter — 5,100 or 27% of the total — left again, most at their own request during the six-month trial period.

The German parliament’s commissioner for the armed forces, Eva Högl, said that army life is a hard sell.

“The biggest problem is boredom,” Högl said. “If young people have nothing to do, if there isn’t enough equipment and there aren’t enough trainers, if the rooms aren’t reasonably clean and orderly, that deters people and it makes the Bundeswehr unattractive.”

At the other end of the scale, tiny Luxembourg has unique demographic challenges. Of its roughly 630,000 passport holders, only 315,000 are Luxembourgers. The number of people of military service age — 18 to 40 — is smaller still.

Around 1,000 people are enlisted. That’s small compared to some European powers, but bigger per capita than the UK armed forces. Recently, Luxembourg — where unemployment is low and salaries are high — has struggled to find just 200-300 military personnel.

Military service comes with many challenges too, not least convincing someone to sign up when they might be sent to the front, and hastily trained conscripts can't replace a professional army. The draft also costs money. Extra staff, accommodation and trainers are needed throughout a conscript's term.