Polls opened on Sunday morning in Greece for the June 9th European Parliament elections. The vote will determine the 21 members of the European Parliament representing Greece, out of a total of 720 seats.
In total, there are 9,796,330 registered voters, of whom 4,755,686 are men and 5,040,644 are women. Additionally, 111,500 new voters will have the right to vote for the first time.
The right to vote in these elections is granted to Greek citizens who are 17 years of age or older. Citizens of other EU Member states residing in Greece can also vote, provided they are registered on the special electoral lists of the municipality where they live. The number of such voters in these elections is 13,023.
A total of 31 political parties and coalitions with 1,168 candidates will be participating in Greece. In order to elect an MEP, they must get a minimum of 3 percent of the vote.
Voters will have the opportunity to choose from candidates representing these parties and coalitions. They can mark their preferred candidates with up to four crosses on the ballot paper.
If more than four crosses are marked the ballot, remains valid but counts in favor of the coalition, disregarding individual preference crosses.
In the 2024 European Parliament elections in Greece, postal voting is being implemented for the first time. A total of 202,515 Greek voters from both within the country and abroad registered on the relevant platform.
Ruling conservative New Democracy has set the bar at matching the result of the previous European election (33.12 percent). Anything above would be an occasion for triumphalism. Anything below, especially if New Democracy drops under 30 percent, may start putting the party’s recent domination of the political landscape into question.
Main opposition SYRIZA and the socialist PASOK will battle for second place, with SYRIZA having gained the upper hand in recent opinion polls after a temporary dip in the second half of 2023.
For SYRIZA’s leader Stefanos Kasselakis, second place could be enough. However, he has at times said that he would like to match the party’s last domestic result (17.83 percent) and has not ruled out a result in the twenties, percentage-wise.
Abstention a concern for the European Elections in Greece
The possibility of a high abstention rate at the election for the European Parliament on Sunday has been a major concern for all political parties in Greece.
Opinion polls suggest many Greek voters may prefer going to the beach instead of the ballot box.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, in his last TV interview on Friday, called on voters to realize that these elections are particularly important and to make the effort to vote, responding to a question on the possibility of a high abstention rate on election day this Sunday.
“I hope this does not happen and that the citizens realize that these elections are particularly important,” he said.
The Prime Minister said he understood the fatigue people feel with the repeated elections. “I want to call on citizens to participate in the elections,” he urges everyone.
“Participation in this ballot box is worth it,” he said. “Very important decisions will be made in Europe in the coming years. Despite the good weather and [elections fatigue], there should be participation. I would not like it to be said, on the night of the elections, that we are all losers because there was high abstention.”
Polls open in 20 EU countries
Polls opened on Sunday in 20 European Union countries, from Sweden and Lithuania in the north to Portugal and Cyprus in the south, as voters choose their representatives for the next five-year term of the European Parliament, amid concern that a likely shift to the political right will undermine the ability of the world’s biggest trading bloc to take decisions as war rages in Ukraine and anti-migrant sentiment mounts.
Citizens will cast ballots to elect 720 members of the European Parliament. Seats in the assembly are allocated based on population, ranging from six in Malta or Luxembourg to 96 in Germany.
Related: European Parliament Elections: Do Greeks Care?
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