European Elections: What Are We Actually Voting For?

European elections are probably among the most misunderstood elections in Europe. Most people are familiar with national elections and know roughly what is at stake when they vote for a government or a parliament. European elections are different. They are held across 27 countries, involve hundreds of political parties and candidates, and ultimately determine the composition of an institution that plays a central role in making European law.

So what are we actually voting for?

The answer is quite simple: Members of the European Parliament, or MEPs. They are the representatives who make up the European Parliament, the only EU institution directly elected by citizens. Parliament shares legislative and budgetary powers with the Council of the European Union and also scrutinises the work of the European Commission. In practice, this means that the people elected in European elections have a direct role in shaping many of the rules that apply across the European Union.

The European Parliament currently has 720 members, elected for five-year terms. But there is an important difference from most national elections: there is no single European electoral system. Elections are organised in each Member State, under national rules that have to comply with certain common European principles. Citizens therefore vote in a European election, but they do so through their own national electoral system.

The number of MEPs elected by each country is not simply proportional to its population either. The EU uses a principle known as degressive proportionality. Larger countries receive more seats, but smaller countries receive more seats in relation to their population. Spain currently elects 61 MEPs, while Malta elects six, even though the difference in population between the two countries is much greater than the difference in the number of seats. The idea is to ensure that smaller Member States retain a meaningful presence in Parliament while still taking population into account.

Once elected, however, MEPs do something that can seem unusual from a national perspective: they do not sit together according to their country. Instead, they join political groups based mainly on their political affiliation.

This is one of the most important things to understand about the European Parliament. A Spanish MEP may sit alongside a German, French or Finnish colleague because they belong to the same political group, while two MEPs from the same country may sit in completely different groups. Parliament is therefore organised around European political alliances rather than national delegations.

The current Parliament has eight political groups, ranging from the centre-left and centre-right to liberal, green, conservative, left-wing and sovereigntist forces. The two groups that have traditionally been the largest are the European People's Party (EPP) and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D). Other groups include Renew Europe, the Greens/European Free Alliance and the European Conservatives and Reformists, alongside the other political formations created after the 2024 elections.

This also explains why European politics cannot simply be understood by looking at national party names. Parties that compete against each other at home may cooperate within the same European political family, while parties with similar positions in different countries may belong to different groups. The Parliament is therefore a place where national political traditions are brought together and transformed into a European political debate.

And these groups matter because Parliament does not simply discuss European politics. It makes decisions that affect the whole Union.

Under the ordinary legislative procedure, the European Parliament and the Council act as co-legislators. They have to agree on the same legislative text, usually following a proposal from the European Commission. Parliament can therefore amend or reject legislation and has an important role in shaping the final outcome. It also shares responsibility for adopting the EU budget and has extensive powers to scrutinise the Commission and other EU institutions.

That gives European elections a significance that is sometimes overlooked. The vote does not directly choose the President of the European Commission or a European government. Instead, it determines the political composition of Parliament, which then becomes one of the main actors in the EU's institutional system.

There is also an interesting tension at the heart of the European elections. The election is European in its consequences, but still largely national in the way it is organised. Citizens vote for national lists or candidates, national political debates strongly influence the campaigns, and electoral rules differ from one country to another. Yet once the votes have been counted, the elected representatives become part of a single European Parliament in which nationality is no longer the main organising principle.

Perhaps this is why European elections can be difficult to understand from a national perspective. They do not fit neatly into the traditional model of an election in which citizens choose a government. Instead, they are one part of a much more complex system of European decision-making involving Parliament, the Council, the Commission and the Member States.

Understanding that system is important because the European Parliament is not a distant institution with little connection to everyday life. Its decisions can influence areas ranging from environmental rules and consumer protection to migration, digital regulation, economic policy and the allocation of the EU budget.

European elections are therefore not simply about choosing 720 politicians every five years. They determine the political balance inside an institution that has become a central part of how the European Union makes decisions. And perhaps the first step towards making these elections more understandable is simply to ask a basic question that is too often overlooked: what exactly happens to our vote once the ballot boxes are closed?