Another turn or the same prospects? The Greek European elections of 2024

Before analysing the current political context within which the elections of the Greek MEPs will take place and describing their configurations, it is considered useful to briefly recall the main features of the Greek form of government. As is well known, it is a parliamentary republic with a single-chamber system, characterised by the fiduciary relationship between government and Parliament, composed of 300 members elected every four years through universal suffrage by citizens of full age. The legal system - that overcome the previous monarchical one - is based on the Republican Constitution of June 11^th, 1975. The President of the Republic, elected every five years by the parliamentarians, plays a role in representing the country and guaranteeing its democracy. The Greek electoral legislation, enacted in 2016 by Law No 4406 under the heading “Proportional representation of political parties, enlargement of the electorate and other provisions concerning the election of deputies” was amended in 2020. Electoral system is a proportional one with a majority prize and a nationwide 3 per cent barrier threshold. The majority prize, as configured by the center-right legislature in 2020, is conceived in a progressive form: the winner of the elections will obtain additional seats that will increase according to its share of the vote, provided it has obtained at least 25 per cent of the votes. This means that in a way, one of the objectives pursued by New Democracy (majority party) was to overcome the previous variation of the proportional electoral system through the introduction of this majority prize made progressive to ensure more stability. The law provides for a bonus of 20 extra seats to be awarded to the first party and the additional allocation of seats will scale up by one seat for each increment of 0.5 percentage points beyond the 25% threshold, culminating in a maximum of 50 seats for political parties achieving 40% of the total vote across the nation… (continues)